About Juliana Maantay

Juliana Maantay , M.U.P., Ph.D., is Professor of Urban Environmental Geography at City University of New York (Lehman College, CUNY Graduate Center, and CUNY School of Public Health) since 1998.  She directs the graduate program in Geographic Information Science as well as the Urban GISc Lab, and has edited several compendia and written two widely-used textbooks and numerous other publications on the urban environment and geospatial analysis.  Her main research foci are environmental justice, health disparities, and exposure/risk assessment, specifically in urban areas.  For 25 years prior to her academic career, she was an urban planner, environmental analyst, and architect.  Dr. Maantay earned a B.Sc. in Environmental Analysis and Design from Cornell University; an M.U.P. from New York University; an M.A. in Geography/GISc from Hunter College, CUNY; and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Environmental Geography from Rutgers University.  

About the Seminar

Urban greening and sustainability approaches are well-accepted methods for improving the urban environment and combating the climate crisis.  Cleaning up potentially contaminated lands and bringing them back into constructive public use is one of the benefits of greening.  However, greening efforts may have unintended consequences, resulting in adverse social and economic impacts to the existing residents, who are often the most vulnerable urban populations.  Spatial analyses of case study examples show that greening can spur “green gentrification.”  Measures can be taken to integrate social equity objectives into urban sustainability planning, to mitigate gentrification, and to improve equitable distribution of environmental benefits.