Twenty-first International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

This study delves into the challenges of preserving secondary growth urban wilds on developable greenfield and examines how environmental impact assessment (EIA) practices marginalize popular resistance to their use post commons. Wilderness cherishing informs the valuation vocabulary to hand for speakers for retention of developable greenfield, yet long ago urban forces transformed them to ecosystems quite distinct from historic lands or rural counterparts. The research begins by modeling the influence of wilderness-cherishing EIA on the rhetoric of advocates for environmental preservation. After developing a model of procedural power in which airing of EIA results at public hearings plays a central role, a transcript of a 2015 public hearing is evaluated by qualitative and quantitative content analysis methods. The central finding is that environmental impact assessments reposition commons-like affinities to greenfield as the discourse of “NIMBYs.” The power effect is to silence momentum for preservation of commons relationships to greenfield so that land use planning and decision making remains out of sync with a newly emerging landscape of environmental perceptions and values. The new “model of procedural power” has potential to instigate reform in the EIA process and in environmental advocacy.