Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
Shatkin, Gavin, Taylor Harris Braswell, and Melinda Martinus. In Press. “Mapping and the politics of informality in Jakarta.” Urban Geography.
Abstract: Recent research has argued that, rather than viewing the “informality” of settlements as an empirically stable phenomenon that can be readily defined and measured based on legal and institutional criteria, informality should instead be viewed as a sociopolitical construct produced by the state in the interests of territorial control. This paper examines the implications of the increasing accessibility of geospatial data and technology for state framings of informality. We specifically ask how state actors have sought to define the “legitimacy” and “formality” of settlement types in mapping, how these mapping efforts have related to change and continuity in discourses and debates within the state about the idea of informality, and how the political dynamics that inform the production of informality have shifted through interactions with communities. We focus on the case of Jakarta, examining recent efforts to map “irregular” settlements, “slums” and “kampung” through an analysis of spatial data, interviews with bureaucrats, and a review of literature on community-based countermapping. We find that mapping efforts apply diverse definitions of informality, based variously on legal/regulatory, developmental, or morphological criteria. These efforts are shaped by the path-dependent interests of varied state agencies in legitimizing and enabling state territorial control.
Braswell, Taylor Harris. 2022. “Extended Spaces of Environmental Injustice: Hydrocarbon Pipelines in the Age of Planetary Urbanization.” Social Forces.
Abstract: Hydrocarbon pipelines have emerged as a highly contentious political issue in recent years. In this paper, I conduct spatial regression analyses at national and regional scales to determine whether the locations of hydrocarbon pipelines constitute a systemic environmental justice issue throughout the contiguous US transmission pipeline system. National-level analyses show that counties with higher percentages of non-White residents are associated with more kilometers of hydrocarbon pipeline, whereas counties with a higher percentage of residents with a four-year college degree are associated with fewer kilometers of hydrocarbon pipeline. Regional analyses reveal further complexity, showing only degrees of consistency with national-level results. Situating these results within the emergent literature on planetary urbanization, I develop a multiscalar environmental justice framework that I call extended spaces of environmental injustice. Extended spaces of environmental injustice describe the places through which infrastructures of extended urbanization, which are built across vast geographical distances and operate to meet the material needs of urban society, materialize as spatially variegated environmental justice issues at the local scale. I conclude by arguing that the extended spaces of environmental injustice framework can open new pathways for research related to environmental justice and scale, both in analyzing the geography of existing infrastructures of extended urbanization and the construction of future infrastructure as efforts to decarbonize the economy manifest spatially.
Thombs, Ryan, Dennis L. Thombs, Andrew K. Jorgenson, and Taylor Harris Braswell. 2020. “What is Driving the Drug Overdose Epidemic in the United States?” Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Abstract: The demand-side perspective argues that the drug overdose epidemic is a consequence of changes in the economy that leave behind working-class people who lack a college education. In contrast, the supply-side perspective maintains that the epidemic is primarily due to changes in the licit and illicit drug environment, whereas a third, distinct perspective argues that income inequality is likely a key driver of the epidemic. To evaluate these competing perspectives, we use a two-level random intercept model and U.S. state-level data from 2006 to 2017. Contrary to the demand-side approach, we find that educational attainment is not associated with drug-related mortality. In support of the supply-side approach, we provide evidence indicating that opioid prescription rates are positively associated with drug-related mortality. We also find that income inequality is a key driver of the epidemic, particularly the lack of resources going to the bottom 20% of earners. We conclude by arguing that considerations of income inequality are an important way to link the arguments made by the demand-side and the supply-side perspectives.
Prener, Christopher G., Taylor Harris Braswell, and Daniel J. Monti. 2020. “St. Louis’s ‘urban prairie’: Vacant land and the potential for revitalization.” Journal of Urban Affairs special issue on shrinking cities.
Abstract: As part of a larger project to understand the relative health and disorder of St. Louis's neighborhoods, this article presents estimates of the number of vacant parcels in the city. These estimates, which are considerably higher than previously published ones, are heavily concentrated in the city’s disinvested and segregated north side. We term this heavy concentration of vacancy urban prairie. After accounting for other factors as well as possible sources of statistical error, we identify both long-term population loss since 1970 and the proportion of African American residents as significant covariates associated with the amount of urban prairie land per neighborhood. These high levels of concentrated vacancy lead us to critique the city’s existing approaches as being too limited in scope and to suggest a range of possibilities for revitalizing portions of northern St. Louis while allowing prairie land to continue to exist in others.
Braswell, Taylor Harris. 2018. “Fresh food, new faces: community gardening as ecological gentrification in St. Louis, Missouri.” Agriculture and Human Values.
Abstract: A largely qualitative body of literature has contributed to understanding the contradictory dimensions of community gardening as a social justice tool. Building on this literature through a city-wide, quantitative intervention, this paper focuses on community gardening as a facilitator of ecological gentrification in St. Louis, Missouri. Combining the analytical lenses of spatial justice, urban political ecology, and the rent gap theory of gentrification, I deploy spatial regression analysis to show that community gardening was positively associated with gentrification in St. Louis between the years 2000 and 2010, as measured by the growth of high socioeconomic status residents in each neighborhood. This result suggests that a sociospatial dialectic exists in which the implementation of a community garden, a change in the use of urban space, leads to unintended social outcomes. Contextualizing this finding within the broader literature, I conclude that the potential of community gardening as an instrument for spatial justice is contingent on institutional support against larger-scale processes, like gentrification, that lead to spatially unjust outcomes.