In Los Angeles in the early 1990s, widespread dissatisfaction with differential access to city government and an array of systemic injustices, including inequitable city service distribution, neighborhood red-lining, and police brutality led to a crisis of confidence. The subsequent civil unrest and a secession movement, which threatened to fragment the city, ultimately led to reforms to the City’s governing charter. Although Los Angeles charter reform served as the arena in which numerous political battles were fought, some participants saw the crisis as a mandate to “strengthen” democracy by enhancing participatory and inclusive structures. These reformers created a system of neighborhood councils to promote civic engagement and improve government responsiveness to local concerns, and established the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (ELA) to oversee the new system.

This dissertation research is a case study that examines how ELA bridges the different approaches to governance between the more grassroots-focused neighborhood councils and the City’s established bureaucratic structures. I use 45 in-depth interviews, 400 hours of observation, and archival review, to explore how ELA’s role and practices bridge the boundaries between neighborhood councils and city bureaucracy, how this has changed over time, and how they shape and are shaped by the principles of strong democracy. My findings suggest that ELA serves as a boundary structure in three main arenas: public policy, organizational processes, and governance paradigms. These findings not only contextualize the outcomes of neighborhood council activities, but also illuminate the potential of neighborhood councils as a means of democratic reform in other large complex municipalities.

Urban food waste in the U.S. is almost exclusively bound for landfills, with significant environmental and the economic consequences. Contrary to this linear flow, cities across the developed world are implementing organics collection programs (OCP) that transform waste into a resource. These systems convert excess food into inputs (e.g. biofuel or soil amendment) for other processes (i.e. food and energy production, water reclamation) thereby approximating naturally occurring closed-loop nutrient systems.

However, efforts to address the flow of food waste into landfills have largely focused on technical solutions that alter the waste management systems of provision, largely ignoring the social aspects of food waste generation and source separation. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior and concepts from social marketing research, results from longitudinal repeated-measures experiments indicate that providing supportive infrastructure is necessary for residents to act on their "intention" to divert food waste from landfills. The experiments are also the first to confirm that communicating the new community norms of separation in the context of a new OCP will increase separation behavior. In sum, closing the loop on urban food systems demands transformations of the systems of provision as well as the social aspects of waste systems.

This research traces the evolution of organic waste policy on two continents using problem-framing as a lens through which to understand how different characterizations of food waste as a problem (i.e. as one of disposal efficiency, risk management or value recovery) result in different policy responses with varying degrees of linearity in urban food material flows. This dissertation contends that successfully closing the loop on urban food systems will demand new problem-framing that employs systems-thinking at the highest levels of policy-making, transformations of both the systems of provision and social practices, and an understanding of the relationship between social and natural systems (i.e. socio-ecological relationships).

Flooding has been a pressing problem for communities around the world. The problem is expected to worsen due to climate change and sea level rise. Despite decades of research on risk communication and management, the toll of flooding continues to mount. In order to advance flood management to minimize future damages, there is a need to foster collaboration among research communities, promote the genuine engagement of local stakeholders, and co-develop targeted risk communication and mitigation strategies between experts and non-experts.

This dissertation experimented with different participatory approaches, such as household surveys, cognitive mapping, and focus group discussions, in order to respectively (1) examine how one’s spatial awareness of flood risk is influenced by the interactions between social, geographical, informational, and hydrological factors, (2) identify differences in expert and non-expert flood knowledge, and (3) integrate diverse stakeholder perspectives in the future development of flood visualizations. Our findings indicate that flood awareness varies significantly between social groups from different geographical regions with different personal characteristics, which point to the need for targeted risk communication and outreach activities in order to address the concern of risk variability. Moreover, we found that while details and realism in flood visualizations can have positive cognitive and affective impacts on users, it is crucial for experts to be cognizant of stakeholders’ background and expertise as these factors may influence their visualization preferences.

Although flood risk awareness is one of the precursors to the adoption of mitigation and preparatory measures, and flood visualizations have the potential to positively impact one’s awareness. We have demonstrated that one’s response to flood information can be influenced by the complex feedback of social, geographical, informational, and hydrological factors. Thus, rather than looking at the development of flood model or flood visualizations as an end in itself, we must look to more adaptive and “no-regret” strategies such as the development of targeted risk communication campaigns and the accumulation of social capital as means to promoting risk mitigation behaviors, which can ultimately increase community resilience in light of the growing problem of flooding.

Our global food system contributes to climate change, shortages of accessible freshwater supplies, declining biodiversity, deforestation, unsustainable land use practices, and increased risks to human health. Furthermore, our food system is inequitable and unjust, with communities of color, people of lower socio-economic status, and women facing disproportionate burdens of these inequalities. To address these crises and promote social-ecological resilience, scholars and advocates are calling for a re-localization of food systems at the city-level. Without examples to draw from, the concept of a socio-ecologically resilient food system within the urban context is still largely theoretical. To address gaps in our understanding and incorporate the insights of those already working within urban food frameworks and toward changing current food system outcomes, this dissertation explores how resilience is conceptualized by innovative, active food organizations (e.g., food justice advocates, urban farms) within urban contexts and within locally relevant policies/plans. Using Los Angeles County as a case study, textual data were collected and analyzed from selected organizations, in-depth, open-ended interviews with associated program directors, and planning and policy documents. Results indicate that resilient food systems promote community-level access to food that is sustainably produced, healthful, equitably accessible, and culturally relevant. External constraints for promoting resilient food systems mirror larger systemic risks facing other sectors (i.e., climate change, economic and social inequalities, conflicts over space). Extreme food waste, limited knowledge of food preparation, production and distribution, and onerous or ambiguous regulations are additional barriers. Furthermore, a globalized food economy and environmental challenges threaten the viability of smaller-scale farms. Opportunities for transforming our current food system through urban-led efforts and achieving more resilient food systems include: (i) activating the citizenry to mobilize around food issues; (ii) policymaking and institutionalizing change through multiple strategies (e.g., strategic policy framing), in multiple forms (e.g., formal and informal), and at various levels of governance (e.g., city and state); and (iii) embracing and supporting an integrated, diversified urban food system (e.g., supporting regenerative agriculture, reintegrating agriculture into all urban spaces, bridging small scale food production with community demand). Findings indicate the potential for cities to be instrumental in promoting food system resilience locally and even at the state level, by incorporating justice and equity into urban food policy and planning.

To deal with urban runoff and stormwater polluting our waterways, cities across California are implementing low-impact development (LID). This research will look at a specific solution: natural treatment system (NTS) or constructed wetlands in Southern California. These systems vary in size, maintenance level, ability to filter pollutants, aesthetics, and others. This research works with Irvine Ranch Water District to evaluate the benefits, challenges and future of these types of systems. The research included observations of visitors to the sites, in depth interviews with nine experts, and an extensive literature review of benefits of constructed wetlands. By studying perception we are interested in how different people value these sites and how that can be used to create places community-members care about. While most find NTS sites beneficial and overall positive use of urban land, there are still disconnects between the community members and their understanding of these complex engineered systems. The future of these systems is unclear, as the benefits are battling with high costs, both for land and operation and maintenance, and what some interviewees called “messy” land uses.

Unequal park distribution threatens park access, especially in underserved communities as does a lack of recognition for users’ preferences. A lack of park access decreases the health benefits from parks available to communities. Thus, park access is an issue of Environmental Justice (EJ). EJ scholarship traces injustices to a lack of procedural justice which, I studied as public participation in decision-making about how parks look and operate. I asked the research questions, “How are park systems modified to better align with the public’s preferences?” and “What is the public’s role in driving those changes?” I drew on collaborative governance (CG) and social-ecological systems (SES) perspectives to understand the public’s role in park decision-making. I collected data in Minneapolis and Chicago. Both top the Trust for Public Land’s list of “best” city park systems and allow the public into decision-making to tailor park infrastructure and operation. I 1) reviewed plans and policy documents; 2) interviewed decision-makers including park supervisors, instructors, planners and administrative authorities, and public advisory councilors; 3) observed decision-making during daily park use, programs, and park board and advisory council meetings. Using the CG perspective, I found public and governmental collaboration in decision-making in four venues: board and advisory council meetings, programs, and daily park use. At times the public’s participatory preferences were incongruent to opportunities offered by government officials. Using the SES perspective, I found that park systems (parks and decision-making processes) were flexible. This allowed the public to address incongruence by modifying park systems using material and human resources, like knowledge of EJ. Participation in decision-making began to address procedural, recognition, and distributional justice by modifying existing, often-exclusive park systems.

The Caribbean faces numerous natural hazards, including hurricanes and earthquakes. Relative to most countries, Caribbean nations experience disproportionately higher impacts of these events in terms of fatalities and damages. Puerto Rico’s experience is not different from other islands in the Caribbean, but its limitation on political and economic power has resulted in local and federal government recovery efforts being very slow and limited at best. As a result, communities on the island have created the conditions to recover from these events by creating collective strategies, to access essential resources, e.g., water, food, and medicine.

This dissertation centers around the experiences of communities in Puerto Rico under cascading disasters (e.g., storms, earthquakes, COVID-19 pandemic). It follows a mixed-methods approach that investigates how disaster resilience needs to incorporate the goals of environmental equity community empowerment under climate change conditions. It pays special attention to water governance issues within these foci, as it intersects communication, collective action, and governance.This dissertation used three different research designs to investigate how resilience mechanisms and processes play out on community members and stakeholders in Puerto Rico. In the first study, I used a text analysis approach to discuss how communities can impact disaster recovery through social media communication. This chapter reflected how people use Twitter under disaster conditions. In the second study, I employed a survey including two regression models to generate discussion about the resource mobilization capacity of Puerto Rico's small water systems under disasters. For the third and final study, I used a qualitative approach, including non-structured interviews and an ethnographic approach to Puerto Rico’s community aqueducts volunteers and personnel. This last study aims to identify diverse understandings of resilience and the role of water in operationalizing it.

The findings indicate the importance of inclusion and community empowerment in creating strategies and understandings of resilience that can help communities to recover. The first study revealed social media's importance when traditional communication channels fail to convey critical information. Additional to social media, social networks play a crucial role in accessing resources resulting in shorter recovery time for communities. Finally, all studies underscore the importance of accessing drinking water under disaster conditions and how it can serve as a vehicle to study how communities stressed by social and environmental conditions recover after a disaster.

This research gave the opportunity for those voices most impacted by disasters to be included, revealing several and complicating issues about resilience for decision-makers to consider. In addition, the findings provide a groundwork for assessing interventions to improve disaster recovery strategies for historically marginalized communities