University of California Institute of Transportation Studies

This study evaluates how environmental justice principles are integrated into transportationand hazard plans across multiple levels of jurisdictions in Greater Los Angeles, revealing how the multi-level governance framework shapes planning practices for environmental justice integration across levels and over time. We conduct a content analysis on 16 transportation, hazard preparedness, climate action, and racial equity plans to develop a scoring methodology. Through comparison we identify patterns and factors contributing to effective environmental justice integration in transportation and hazard planning. Findings show that although infrastructure (transportation and hazard) plans achieve higher environmental justice integration on average than other plans after 2019, some subdimensions – like recognition justice – remain less integrated. Curiously, the positive trend between environmental justice and multi-level governance observed for climate action and racial equity plans is not observed for infrastructure plans, suggesting greater nuance among the strategies that lead to its successful integration in infrastructure planning.