Towards Environmental Justice in Transportation Decision Making using Structured Public Involvement

摘要

Environmental Justice (EJ), in the form of distributional justice, is mandated by a 1994Executive Order. However, EJ is not easily achieved. This article examines how a philosophybased on John Rawls’ theories of procedural justice and access to justice can address the need toachieve distributional justice (EJ).The DoT’s definition of EJ is used to explain how the philosophy of large groupprocesses can address the requirements. EJ research can be divided into identification andmitigation strategies. EJ mitigation strategies intersect with public involvement, which intransportation has a long, and often controversial, history. To improve procedural justice, theauthors examine how effective large-group processes might deliver high-performance publicinvolvement. To realize this contribution, methodological barriers in group performance arediscussed and the role of technologies such as electronic polling and visualization is discussed.The authors propose four process metrics for public involvement. Using Structured PublicInvolvement or SPI project data, the authors argue that designing processes that satisfy thesemetrics will help to improve procedural justice and thereby address specific EJ aims. Data fromthis research and the cross-disciplinary literature review illustrates that realizing this potentialimprovement will require; a philosophical shift to a higher Arnstein Ladder level; theidentification and use of stronger mixtures of methodologies for involving large groups ofcitizens with diverse values; and the integration of these valuations into effective decisionsupport systems for project managers and engineers.