October 26, 2022 12:30 pm
Professor Hamil Pearsall, Temple University
October 26, 12:30-1:30 pm
Lunch available at 12:00 (registration required)
Hamil Pearsall, PhD
Associate Professor in Geography and Urban Studies
Temple University
Talk info:
Despite the potential of infrastructure systems to improve human health and well-being, these benefits are inequitably distributed. Studies around the world have illustrated these inequities; yet attention to the uneven distribution of benefits and burdens across the urban and rural places connected by these systems has been limited. Not all urban neighborhoods benefit from infrastructure, but cities are typically prioritized over rural areas for health care, water provision, and electrification. Large-scale infrastructure, such as highways or waterways, can transfer or spread risks across urban and rural places. Using the example of multiple infrastructure systems in metropolitan Philadelphia, this presentation illustrates the scalar dilemmas of measuring equity across urban regions and proposes to build knowledge infrastructure at the regional scale to develop equitable solutions for the future.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Pearsall is an urban geographer with expertise in the environmental dimensions of urban processes and change. She uses mixed-methods approaches, including geospatial techniques and qualitative methods, to discern local patterns and processes. Her work investigates how efforts to mitigate the risks from urban environmental hazards, from brownfields to climate change, may intentionally or unintentionally exacerbate existing or create new social and environmental vulnerabilities and injustices. Increasingly, Dr. Pearsall focuses on forward-looking solutions to redress long-standing injustices based on fundamental reconfigurations of the processes that create landscapes of risk and vulnerability.