A Just Transition Framework for Resilience - Evaluating Strategies for Seattle’s Duwamish Valley Resilience District

Abstract

This thesis develops a framework for evaluating policies that advance climate justice within the emerging Duwamish Valley Resilience District in Seattle, Washington. The Duwamish Valley is a legacy industrial area and environmental justice community facing cumulative pollution burdens and increasing climate impacts. The Resilience District aims to pilot policies, investments and projects that equitably respond to local priorities for health, housing, economy, environment, and culture. This research examines the question of how effective are city-community led urban planning policies and investments that aim to advance priorities such as a just-transition, a clean circular economy and climate resilience in urban industrial districts. Utilizing an exploratory case study approach, this research develops an evaluation matrix to analyze the policies of the Duwamish Valley Action Plan through the lens of just transition, the circular economy and resilience. The original analytical framework that’s developed integrates these concepts into a set of nine criteria to evaluate the plans alignment with the three overarching goals of Seattle’s One Climate Justice Agenda. This comparative analysis of planning policies and initiatives examines city commitments and the funding associated with implementation of this plan and agenda. This research provides a model for evaluating climate and resilience planning policies in cities against a set of just transition, circular economy and resilience evaluative criteria. It contributes a replicable, qualitative method to align sustainability and climate justice planning policies with the proposed dimensions of a just transition, circularity and resilience. Lessons learned aim to inform replication of resilience planning processes centered on justice in similarly positioned industrial neighborhoods nationwide pursuing a more sustainable, and just way forward.