Learning Los Angeles: Environmental Justice
by Bryan Liu
When one thinks of Los Angeles and sustainability, a common mental image usually involves the physical environment: air quality, drought, urban heat, wildfires, and loss of green space. However, this perspective captures only the surface of what sustainability truly means in this great city. What I’ve come to understand is that the environmental realities of LA are layered on top of a wealth of history of migration, segregation, displacement, and cultural survival. The land of Los Angeles is so much more than just dirt and trees: it is also about the people who live here. To understand sustainability in LA, one must understand the people who live on this land, the stories they carry, and the vulnerabilities that shaped their history.
This realization came into focus during a virtual event I attended, hosted by USC Dornsife Black Studies Center, called After the Fire: Voices from Black Altadena, which discussed the Eaton Fire and its impact on the local Black community. Despite the digital nature of the event, the speakers’ stories deeply resonated with me. Through their voices, I felt how a wildfire can transcend a natural disaster and become a reminder of social inequity. The Eaton Fire exposed disproportionate emergency services, inadequate fire protection in buildings, and a lack of political power in communities of color—all factors that had been boiling under the surface. This perfect storm created a situation in which these communities were disproportionately vulnerable long before the first ember ever sparked.
This experience also reminded me of Big Rock Burning, a documentary film about the impact of the Palisades Fire on the Big Rock community. The film presented very similar stories of mismanagement causing vulnerability and the loss of a whole community in the face of fire. On top of this, this panel also echoed work I did earlier in the semester on East Palo Alto and cases of environmental injustice there. What struck me was just how similar the situations these cities are facing were: two very different places, both made vulnerable by political disenfranchisement, both facing outsized environmental and social danger. In this way, the film, the panel, and my previous work has made one thing abundantly clear: sustainability, regardless of location, is not purely an environmental science. To think of such is to miss the forest for the trees. Sustainability is deeply intertwined with climate forces, urban planning decisions, historical injustices, and the everyday acts of community resilience.
Understanding this has changed the way I interact with Los Angeles and how I see USC’s role in the broader community. As an educational institution, the university should take a more proactive role in allowing students to discover these truths about sustainability for themselves. While the current efforts focusing on reducing waste, energy use, and carbon footprint are important, a focus on metrics is a narrow-minded perspective. Sustainability education should equally illuminate the human stories embedded in the land we live on: from the history of Native American displacement to the gentrification of South Central LA. By understanding these stories of the past and present, we can begin to build a version of sustainability that is equitable to both the land and the people who call Los Angeles home.