Our work.
2025
King County’s Environmental Justice Movement: Building Power from the Ground Up
Image Credit: Photo by Maick Maciel on Unsplash
The Challenge
For decades, environmental justice (EJ) movements have fought to protect communities disproportionately affected by pollution, climate change, and other environmental harms. While many activists engage with government agencies to push for policy changes, others argue that working within these systems can slow progress or even reinforce existing inequalities.
The reality is more complex—change happens in different ways. Some strategies challenge the system, others work within it, and many combine both approaches. The key question is: How can we create policies that truly reflect and empower frontline communities?
A Local Approach to Change
In South King County, Washington, grassroots advocates helped establish the Community Engagement Specialist (CES) role, a position designed to ensure historically marginalized voices shape environmental and climate policies. Instead of government officials making decisions in isolation, the CES framework integrates lived experiences into policymaking, addressing critical issues like housing, public health, and climate resilience.
This approach goes beyond just having a "seat at the table"—it builds new tables where communities drive the conversation.
What We’re Studying
Our research explores how environmental justice activists—both inside and outside government—view efforts like the CES framework. We want to understand:
What works: How have policies like this made a difference?
What’s challenging: What barriers exist when community-driven policies become institutionalized?
What’s next: How can other communities replicate and adapt these strategies?
We’re interviewing people deeply involved in this work to capture their experiences and insights. By highlighting successes and challenges, we aim to inform future efforts that balance immediate harm reduction with long-term systemic change.
Why It Matters
Community-led environmental justice efforts show that meaningful progress happens when power is shared. Our research seeks to document and amplify these strategies, ensuring that policies designed for the community are also created by the community.
Recent news: This work has been accepted for presentation at the 2025 Engienering Project Organization Conference (Chennai, India)!
Living with Water: Adapting to Flooding in the Duwamish Valley
Image Credit: Photo by Bethany Gordon
A Community-Centered Approach to Climate Resilience
The Duwamish Valley, home to vibrant communities and deep cultural roots, faces increasing risks from flooding due to climate change, sea-level rise, and aging infrastructure. Residents—many of whom are from historically marginalized communities—are on the front lines of these environmental changes. The Living with Water project is working to ensure that solutions reflect the needs and knowledge of the people who live here.
Why This Matters
For years, flooding in the Duwamish Valley has impacted homes, businesses, schools, and daily life, yet many existing flood management strategies have failed to center community voices. Living with Water takes a different approach: rather than simply imposing solutions, it partners with local residents to shape strategies that work for them.
What We’re Doing
Through interviews, workshops, and engagement with local leaders, our project is asking:
How do residents experience and respond to flooding?
What solutions feel most effective and equitable to the community?
How can policies ensure that those most affected by climate change have a say in the solutions?
We’re using an equity-focused evaluation framework to assess whether current and proposed flood adaptation strategies truly benefit the community in fair and just ways. This means looking at who is included in decision-making, who benefits, and whether solutions reinforce or disrupt existing inequities.
What’s Next
The insights gathered will help shape policies that:
✅ Improve community-driven flood adaptation strategies
✅ Ensure local voices guide decision-making, not just outside experts
✅ Address environmental justice concerns while planning for a changing climate
Climate adaptation isn’t just about infrastructure—it’s about people. The Living with Water project aims to ensure that resilience planning in the Duwamish Valley is just, inclusive, and community-led.
Recent news: For the most recent updates, please visit this page.
Duwamish Valley residents are invited to participate in interviews, listening sessions, focus groups, workshops and design charettes. Please contact Bethany Gordon via email at bmg1@uw.edu for more information.
Rethinking Flood Infrastructure: Building Equity into Design
Image Credit: Photo by Med Badr Chemmaoui on Unsplash
Flooding is not just a natural disaster—it’s a social issue.
While traditional flood management has focused on large-scale engineering solutions, these approaches often overlook the unique vulnerabilities of marginalized communities.
This project explores how stormwater engineers make design decisions and how their choices shape who is most impacted by flooding. By conducting interviews with engineers in Seattle, we aim to uncover how equity can be embedded into flood infrastructure planning to ensure that flood management strategies serve all communities fairly—not just those with the most resources.
By understanding how decisions are made, this research will inform better policies and practices that prioritize community needs, environmental justice, and long-term resilience.
Recent news: This work has been accepted for presentation at the 2025 Engienering Project Organization Conference (Chennai, India)!
Inclusive Walkability: Designing Cities for Everyone
Image Credit: Photo by Ryan Wilson on Unsplash
Walkable cities are key to reducing carbon emissions and improving public health, but many urban environments fail to accommodate people with disabilities. Most walkability metrics only consider proximity to amenities, ignoring critical factors like sidewalk accessibility, lighting, and safe crossings.
This project is working to develop a new "walkability" metric that centers accessibility for people with disabilities -- an active transportation accessibility metric.
Through interviews and geospatial data analysis, we aim to identify barriers in urban design and provide solutions that make cities truly walkable for all.
By prioritizing inclusive design, this research supports a shift toward equitable, sustainable, and healthy urban environments—ensuring that everyone, regardless of ability, can navigate and enjoy their city.
Recent news: This work has been accepted for presentation at the 2025 Engienering Project Organization Conference (Chennai, India)!
2024
Rethinking Stormwater Systems to Consider Unhoused Communities During Flood Events
Aging stormwater systems in the U.S. are struggling to handle increasingly intense storms, posing a serious threat to people living without shelter. Unhoused communities are especially vulnerable to flooding, as their temporary homes offer little protection and they lack the safety net of property insurance. This review looks at how failing infrastructure during severe storms disproportionately harms these individuals. By analyzing existing research, it highlights gaps in our understanding and identifies key themes that could guide future studies. The goal is to rethink current engineering practices to better protect unhoused people from the dangers of flooding.
You can find the academic article here. If you can't access the article, contact Bethany Gordon to request a copy.
We won Best Policy-Oriented Paper Award! 🏅
Image Credit: Figure 1. Fletcher, S., Hadjimichael, A., Quinn, J., Osman, K., Giuliani, M., Gold, D., ... & Gordon, B. (2022). Equity in water resources planning: A path forward for decision support modelers. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 148(7), 02522005.
Equity in Water Resources Planning: A Path Forward for Decision Support Modelers
Not all communities have equal access to safe, affordable water. Many marginalized communities face higher risks of flooding, contamination, or unaffordable water bills—all because of historical disinvestment and environmental injustice.
This project examines how water resource planners and engineers can make decisions that prioritize equity. Instead of relying on traditional modeling tools that focus only on efficiency or cost, this work explores how decision-making can be redesigned to ensure fair access to water resources for all.
By integrating social and environmental justice into water planning models, we can shift toward a more just, sustainable, and community-driven future for water management.
You can find the academic article here. If you can't access the article, contact Bethany Gordon to request a copy.
2023
Highlighting Racial History Could Boost Support for Climate Solutions in Vulnerable Communities
This is a photo of historic Jackson Ward in Richmond, VA, USA. The historically Black neighborhood was severely affected when the I-95 highway was constructed through the neighborhood. (Photo source: Library of Congress, Survey number: HABS VA-364, National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 76002187).
Communities on the front lines of climate change—often made up of racial minorities—face the biggest challenges, and they need better infrastructure to survive. One way to help is to focus on giving resources to communities based on their needs, ensuring they have what it takes to keep going in the face of climate-related threats. This approach differs from other methods, which tend to reward people or places based on their past accomplishments. Focusing on needs is crucial because frontline communities are often left with fewer resources due to a long history of discrimination. However, race is rarely discussed when planning for climate adaptation.
This study explored whether bringing up a community’s racial history—such as how a highway built through a historically Black neighborhood contributed to its decline—might increase support for giving that community more resources to protect against climate impacts. In an experiment, 1,731 people watched a video showing how updated infrastructure, like cooler pavement, could help a vulnerable community. Some viewers also saw a short segment about the racial history of the neighborhood. While this extra information didn't significantly change overall support for a needs-based approach, further analysis showed that those who found the racial history relevant were more likely to support it. The findings suggest that longer, more detailed explanations of racial history might have a stronger impact in future studies.