The Burden of Racialized Time: Exploring Cumulative Impacts Using an Intergenerational Environmental Justice Framework

Why intergenerational environmental justice framework?

Research underscores the importance of critical environmental justice scholarship in examining how power structures create and reinforce social dynamics that stratify minoritized groups’ lives.^{33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40} Critical environmental justice is deeply intersectional, highlighting the indispensability of historically disinvested groups in imagining environmentally just futures. For communities to be environmentally just, local policymaking must focus on age, aging, and intergenerational relationships. Although scholarship exists on these topics,^{41,42,43,44,45} most of this work is not explicit within critical environmental justice. Intergenerational justice^46,47,48 centers these conversations. To our knowledge, little research critically examines questions of disparities in time, human development, and intergenerational relationships, especially as it relates to critical environmental justice’s key pillars. Although an intergenerational environmental justice lens is present within environmental studies,^{49,50,51,52,53,54} it is an under-examined tool in local governance.

First, we present a time-focused IntEJ framework that includes key concepts from critical environmental justice and intergenerational justice scholarship that can contribute to theoretical discussions centering justice between and within generations among historically excluded groups. We briefly discuss how core elements of critical environmental justice and intergenerational justice shape IntEJ. We then detail IntEJ’s four components—intersectionality^55,56; the intersection of age, time, and place^57,58; life course theory^59,60; and centering multiple forms of justice^61,62—and introduce the concept of racialized time. Next, we discuss how time is considered within cumulative impact assessments and how racialized time, within IntEJ, can offer additional insight into cumulative impacts before examining the Louisville case.

The importance of critical environmental justice and intergenerational justice to an intergenerational environmental justice framework

IntEJ is a framework for evaluating local governance in relation to environmental harms (see Fig. 1), examining their cumulative and disparate impacts across past, present, and future generations. Grounded in critical environmental justice and intergenerational justice, it emphasizes how environmental harms are understood and addressed over time, highlighting the need to consider intersecting identities and power structures (intersectionality).^{63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70} Critical environmental justice efforts emphasize that a multi-scalar approach to environmental justice issues is warranted. Just as the causes and ramifications of environmental injustices are complex, so are the approaches employed by organizations, communities, and administrations. Environmental justice decisions must consider intersectionality, particularly in how the scope and scale of these issues are “racialized, gendered and classed” (p. 227). ⁷¹ These inequalities are a product of the racialization of organizations ⁷² and their control of their members’ time. As critical environmental justice underscores, underserved communities’ collective voices and knowledge are indispensable to addressing inequities and building equitable futures. We add to critical environmental justice work by engaging research focused on the intersection of age, time, and place.^73,74 As scholars have noted,^75,76 age-related housing policies explore the aging process, especially the ability for one to age in place. However, age-inclusive policies often lack diverse perspectives on how older adults think about and utilize spaces,^77,78 leading to unclear housing solutions. IntEJ calls attention to the creative^79,80 and Black^{81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91} placemaking literature, to examine the collective creation of spaces of belonging (i.e., collective placemaking) as people age and engage with others across generations.

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FIG. 1.

Intergenerational environmental justice framework. The framework consists of four key areas: intersectionality (relationality and social context, analysis of systems of power and injustices), the intersection of age, time, and place (collective placemaking, collective proximity to toxicity, racialized time and administrative burdens), life course theory (the interdependency or “linkage” of lives; the importance of sociohistorical context, time, and place; human agency), and centering multiple forms of justice (importance of various forms of justice [procedural, distributive, reparative], interrogating uneven attention to forms of justice within cumulative impacts discussions).

Intergenerational justice scholarship highlights ethical obligations across and within generations, especially when current policies prioritize present interests over future equity.^92,93,94,95 Intergenerational justice raises critical environmental justice questions about intergenerational conflict, housing demand, ⁹⁶ and wealth transmission through homeownership. ⁹⁷ A life course approach ⁹⁸ strengthens this framework by emphasizing the significance of time, sociohistorical context, and the cumulative impact of relationships, opportunities, and constraints. For example, age and place intersect over time to produce disparate outcomes, as environmental harms can affect individuals differently and over varying durations. The unevenness of time, both real and perceived, across lives, generations, and policy efforts undoubtedly impacts our understanding of cumulative impacts as well as the limits to policies and one’s agency in responding to environmental concerns. ⁹⁹

Racialized time exacerbates impacts of exposure and proximity to environmental hazards. Furthermore, racialized spaces span generations and influence individuals in similar ways, where racialized groups get “stuck in a time machine” (p. 500) ¹⁰⁰ within segregated neighborhoods, due to redlining, reverse redlining, and racial steering. ¹⁰¹ Additionally, time is racialized for Indigenous groups who have experienced the dispossession of Indigenous lands, forced relocation, and exposure to environmental burdens on reservation lands. These time-related, racialized burdens are embedded within administrative structures. ¹⁰²

To address intergenerational environmental issues, policymakers should uphold citizens’ rights to place and incorporate distributive, procedural, and reparative justice ¹⁰³ for historically excluded communities (centering multiple forms of justice). IntEJ integrates these principles into policy and goal setting, ensuring policies reflect the impacts of racialized practices within racial capitalism,^104,105,106 considering their past, present, and future impacts across generations and age groups, ¹⁰⁷ and the cumulative environmental risks over time. Additionally, IntEJ-informed policies would address intergenerational concerns related to displacement.^{108,109,110,111}

Cumulative impacts and time

Biased systems and policies exacerbate cumulative impacts and situate sources of environmental harm near and among low-income communities and communities of color. Cumulative impact policies and regulations center on environmental and health issues in analyses. They consider intersections of environmental, health, and socioeconomic characteristics (intrinsic and extrinsic) to identify vulnerable populations who are more likely subjected to adverse effects from exposure to pollutants,^112,113 but without standardized sets of factors in assessment models. ¹¹⁴ Addressing cumulative impacts is complex, as the historic accumulation of structural inequality burdens has been used to undermine cumulative impacts policy and research that seeks to identify those responsible for both the exposure and regulatory solutions. ¹¹⁵ Additionally, most efforts identify spatial concentrations without substantive consideration of time. Newark, New Jersey’s environmental justice ordinance requires developers to inform the city of potential cumulative environmental impacts of geographically concentrated polluting industries when requesting or renewing permits.^116,117 However, these ordinance and federal discussions of cumulative impacts limit considerations of time to future impacts, leaving out discussions of past impacts. ¹¹⁸

Recent federal recommendations regarding cumulative impacts also begin to consider time. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2022 recommendations define cumulative impacts as the combined effects of chemical and nonchemical stressors on health and well-being, emphasizing the need for analysis across a person’s lifetime and at individual, community, or population levels. ¹¹⁹ Here, time is a function of life outcomes and over lifetimes. The scale of impacts can occur at multiple levels or be aggregated across groups. The 2024 EPA cumulative impacts recommendations integrate environmental stressors with social vulnerabilities using various methods. ¹²⁰ These tools help assess and prioritize community impacts by identifying relevant concerns and targeting resources, but oversimplify structural inequalities, overlook the compounding effects of harm over time, and fail to sufficiently consider changes across time.

Understanding time: Racialized burdens, intergenerational environmental justice, and cumulative impacts

Environmental justice scholarship emphasizes the urgency and temporality of sustainability and environmental efforts. ¹²¹ Cumulative impacts frameworks contextualize environmental justice concerns by exposing the long-term, disproportionate harms faced by disinvested communities. Integrating an IntEJ framework reveals how time is racialized at individual, organizational, and community levels, highlighting how unequal access to time worsens systemic environmental inequities.

The racialization of time offers insight into historically disinvested groups who continue to face environmental and other inequities. Time is a valuable resource, driven by Eurocentric ideals and expectations of how one should use their time. ¹²² Racism, and specifically anti-Blackness, defines, dictates, and redistributes time differentially. Racialized groups’ time is considered less valuable than their white counterparts, as these groups often must spend more time seeking out basic necessities.^{123,124,125,126} Time use is also racialized in mundane activities that can have deadly consequences. ¹²⁷ Understanding community and local policymakers’ conceptions of time can provide additional context for assessing cumulative impacts in areas such as housing.

Housing discrimination wastes minoritized groups’ time by creating disinvested neighborhoods that lack the financial, educational, and social resources needed to navigate daily living. Minoritized groups experience more administrative time burdens as they face racialized, ¹²⁸ intersectional^129,130,131 environmental injustices, from redlining’s link to lending discrimination ¹³² to racial gatekeeping ¹³³ by landlords. ¹³⁴ Aging and routine dilapidation of homes are time, financial, and environmental burdens that are disproportionately borne by low-income Black older women homeowners. ¹³⁵

Perceptions of free time can also be racialized. For example, burdens faced by racialized groups can limit their ability to imagine, plan, or enjoy unstructured, leisure time. Colen and colleagues ¹³⁶ note that Black Americans’ time is highly regulated, restricting their capacity to dream and explore personal growth, contributing to negative health outcomes and premature death. IntEJ posits that minoritized groups deserve time, freedom, and opportunity to envision and plan for just, sustainable communities.

Cumulative impacts are best understood through the intergenerational and multidimensional lens of time and space. Considering time as social means examining how it shapes the multiple meanings, expectations, and values that people, institutions, and societies place on the temporal patterns of day-to-day life.^137,138,139 Social timing is important to life course theory because age influences roles and beliefs. It reflects the synchronicity, or asynchronicity, of individual life paths with sociohistorical events and relationships over time. ¹⁴⁰ Considering the racialization of space, race and space influence individuals’ perception and navigation of spaces, individuals’ expectations of how they are and want to be treated, policies impacting places (e.g., welfare, public housing), and the potential for creating “spaces of solidarity, respite, and resistance for people of color” (p. 1527). ¹⁴¹

Environmental justice efforts to consider cumulative impacts benefit from understandings of race, space, and time that contextualize the overarching and intergenerational aspects of environmental risks. ¹⁴² Just as material goods are passed down across generations, racialized time burdens can span generations. Racialized time and the larger IntEJ framework reveal administrative and lived burdens that underscore the urgency of justice-oriented environmental action that targets harmful cumulative impacts. Exploring IntEJ and racialized time within the context of Louisville’s emerging Anti-Displacement Law serves as an excellent case in which to explore how local policymakers are attempting to remedy the cumulative effects of long-standing housing inequities.

Louisville, Kentucky’s environmental and housing landscape

Environmental policy and advocacy in Louisville intertwine with housing efforts. Louisville’s housing efforts are ultimately the result of racial capitalism, and the slow response to ongoing and cumulative environmental and housing burdens in Black and brown communities highlights the importance of considering racialized time.

Situated on the Ohio River, Louisville has faced a myriad of issues related to flood control, with the 1937 flood sparking major flood control and land use management efforts, including displacement in flood-prone areas. ¹⁴⁸ Historically Black neighborhoods disproportionately experience aging sewer systems, raw sewage overflows, vapor intrusion, and sewer backups.^149,150,151 Since 1997, the Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District has used Federal Emergency Management Agency’s buyout program to acquire and demolish 389 flood-damaged homes, mostly in West Louisville’s historically Black communities. ¹⁵² Flooding produces cumulative, economic, social, and health impacts that, over time, are compounded due to repeated flooding. Additionally, Louisville’s concentration of industry along the river and rail corridors led to contamination, abandoned land, and disinvestment in areas with marginalized, under-resourced residents. Land remediation gained attention through the EPA’s Superfund program in the early 1980s and brownfields programs followed in the late 1990s. These programs identified barriers to remediation using private market economic incentives. ¹⁵³ Many of the cleanup and redevelopment projects have only resulted in market rate and luxury housing. ¹⁵⁴ In 2022, federal brownfield grant criteria added consideration of displacement due to gentrification. ¹⁵⁵ Louisville Metro Government (LMG) now has an incentive to prioritize cleanup assistance based on location of historical disinvestment, along with considering who benefits from the investment now and into the future.

Metro Council has yet to consider legislation to address cumulative impacts related to exposures from toxic and hazardous substances. ¹⁵⁶ Explicit discussion of racialized cumulative impact assessment occurs in Louisville through policy discourse and advocacy regarding air pollution and industrial permitting. Policy and advocacy around air pollution dates back to its 1945 smoke ordinance and continued with legislation at local (1950s), state (1960s), and federal (1970s) levels. ¹⁵⁷ Community-based organizations, led by Black residents, demanded better air monitoring and analysis of impacted Black neighborhoods, leading to a risk assessment and the first local air regulations. ¹⁵⁸ In 2020, after demand to address cumulative impacts of multiple chemicals emitted from multiple sources, LMG and APCD convened a Multi-Pollutant Workgroup and produced recommendations to include environmental and health impacts in planning decisions, driven by the city’s comprehensive plan. The report recommended updates to the Land Development Code, requiring analysis of air quality cumulative impacts. ¹⁵⁹ While LMG made some progress in air quality improvements, ¹⁶⁰ Black and brown residents are still more likely to be near industrial polluters than white residents.^161,162,163 Cumulative impacts related to environmental harms compound with other harms that Black households and neighborhoods disproportionately experience. The time over which the impacts are experienced, time spent advocating, and time spent waiting for interventions showcase how time is racialized in environmental decision making. This time spent cannot be returned.

Housing justice advocacy and policymaking emerged over time from the open housing movements of the late 1950s and early 1960s. ¹⁶⁴ The resulting local fair housing policies focused on documenting racialized practices and disparities in housing programs aimed at promoting homeownership. ¹⁶⁵ Since 1990, LMG has demolished several public housing complexes through Hope VI grants ¹⁶⁶ and continues redevelopment, resulting in the displacement of residents in various ways. In response to affordable housing advocacy, the city established the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2014, the first dedicated local budget for affordable housing outside federal and state programs.

Louisville’s 2020 Comprehensive Plan identified housing as a priority, leading to updates in the Land Development Code to improve access to homeownership. This included initiatives to address historic redlining and help residents build wealth through homeownership. Because federal fair housing laws prohibit specifying funds based on racialized categories, some efforts rely on spatial proxies to account for racialized inequity. ¹⁶⁷ These proxies capture how racialized and other systems of inequality intersect, addressing disparities without naming them directly. They also acknowledge that wealth and homeownership produce unequal outcomes over individuals’ lifetimes, shaping long-term community impacts.

Louisville’s environmental and housing policy and advocacy history informed efforts to establish and implement anti-displacement strategies, including the passage of the law. Our examination of the emerging law in this historical context sets the stage for IntEJ-informed insights.

Anti-displacement discourse and policy within an intergenerational environmental justice framework

The 2023 Anti-Displacement Law was passed after substantial grassroots advocacy regarding rising homelessness, eviction rates, housing cost burdens, and gentrification of historically Black neighborhoods. Advocates wanted transparent economic development decisions, particularly in West Louisville. They feared that public incentives fueling development would displace longtime Black residents, contributing to gentrification. They worked with Metro Council members to draft the law, amending the Land Development Code. The initial draft focused solely on historically Black neighborhoods. The law now applies citywide, erasing the explicit focus on racialized neighborhoods. It includes three components: making investigations of discriminatory practices public, creating an Anti-Displacement Commission, ¹⁶⁸ and requiring that developers seeking public funds submit an anti-displacement assessment of their project using a new assessment tool.

From the law’s initial draft to the final version and its assessment tool, IntEJ tenets help us evaluate the progression of the law and its components. Table 1 ¹⁶⁹ provides an overview of how we map them onto the four IntEJ tenets, with attention to racialized time and questions policymakers should consider more broadly. The law requires that the results of all LMG-led discrimination investigations be publicly accessible through open records requests, promoting procedural justice. This clarifies that the public has a right to know if a landlord or housing-related agency has a record of discrimination. It facilitates renters’ agency through a procedural path for protection against those with a record of discrimination (life course theory). However, the burden of discovery remains substantial, including costs in time, effort, and knowledge to submit open records requests and time waiting for the information. This cost is borne by those most impacted by real and perceived discrimination and in neighborhoods with larger shares of Black residents, where the added time burdens accumulate.

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Table 1.

Consideration of Racialized Time and IntEJ within Anti-Displacement Discourse and Policy Efforts

Discourse and policy efforts	Guiding IntEJ tenets	Consideration of racialized time	Questions for policymakers to consider
Advocacy within West Louisville	Intersection of age, time, and place - Collective placemaking - Collective proximity to toxicity Life course theory - The interdependency or “linkage” of lives - Human agency Intersectionality - Relationality and social context - Intersecting social identities	The advocacy of various groups around housing and environmental justice issues has taken decades to get to this Anti-Displacement Law, thus leading to a considerable loss of time in achieving policy recognition. Though the policy has passed, these communities have yet to see the outcomes of their work.	- Is this ordinance and other housing and sustainability efforts in line with the overall concerns of diverse communities? - In what ways can the Anti-Displacement Law attend to intergenerational living situations and decisions regarding housing?
Initial ordinance draft’s target of historical, predominantly Black neighborhoods	Intersection of age, time, and place - Collective placemaking	Advocates and subsequently policymakers focused on these neighborhoods, given the housing inequities and rates of displacement. The shift of the focus away from these communities to the entire city can potentially obscure and slow down efforts in these locations, further delaying necessary actions.	- Are people who live in areas with ongoing and historical disinvestment going to accrue any additional burdens in any form (e.g., entry park/usage fees)? - Is there a mechanism upon which to incentivize developers to focus on historically disinvested communities? - Are there any criteria for developing spaces that foster community engagement?
Current policy key component: Making investigations of discriminatory practices public	Centering multiple forms of justice - Procedural and retributive justice Life course theory - Human agency	Making investigations of discriminatory practices public can expose and validate housing inequalities. This effort also makes important information more accessible, increasing one’s knowledge and agency as it relates to housing concerns. However, for minoritized groups, fighting discrimination in court often wastes their time and energy. The time it takes to conduct investigations does not address immediate housing issues, such as displacement.	- Are there any guidelines for handling investigations beyond making them public (e.g., specific timeline and time restrictions on the process, from making an investigation public to its completion)?
Current policy key component: Creation of an Anti-Displacement Commission	Life course theory - Human agency Intersectionality - Analysis of systems of power and injustices Centering multiple forms of justice - Procedural and distributive justice	An Anti-Displacement Commission consisting of longtime residents of displacement risk areas provides minoritized and historically disinvested groups the opportunity to review displacement-related efforts and provide recommendations to Metro Government, among other efforts. While these efforts are commendable, they are time-consuming and demanding, particularly when minoritized citizens’ involvement on government-led commissions and projects becomes symbolic rather than meaningful, as their voices are often overlooked.	- How diverse are the members of the commission (e.g., diversity in age, gender, race/ethnicity, length of residency beyond the required 7 years, diverse housing/household experiences)? - What will be the communication and deliberation process for this commission? - Are there intentional and sustainable pathways for continued participation of members after their tenure on the commission?
Current policy key component: Requiring developers seeking public funds to submit an anti-displacement assessment	Intersectionality - Analysis of systems of power and injustices Centering multiple forms of justice - Procedural and distributive justice - Interrogating uneven attention to forms of justice within cumulative impacts discussions	This directive shifts the burden of establishing and advocating for adequate housing from those most affected to the developers. Ideally, this significantly reduces the amount of time minoritized groups and housing advocates spend fighting for affordable housing. This approach also applies a precautionary principle to addressing future risks, in that developers must prove that they will not do any harm before receiving federal funds.	- Are there additional criteria for developers throughout the development process, aside from the initial requirements?
Anti-Displacement Tool	Centering multiple forms of justice - Procedural justice - Interrogating uneven attention to forms of justice within cumulative impacts discussions	The tool seeks to address the cumulative impacts of discriminatory social, economic, and housing practices that have led to displacement in predominantly minoritized neighborhoods. By doing so, the tool is a way to acknowledge and rectify the inequalities faced over time.	- Why is there an assessment every 5 years? - Is a housing assessment every 5 years enough to capture the ever-changing social, environmental, and political landscape impacting displacement?

The law creates the Anti-Displacement Commission, staffed by the LMG Human Relations Commission ¹⁷⁰ and consisting of nine unpaid members appointed by the mayor. Members are residents from nine “areas of displacement,” defined as areas with “higher renter rates”; membership is updated every 5 years. ¹⁷¹ The commission is tasked with reviewing the Anti-Displacement Tool and program, examining discriminatory cases involving LMG, and prioritizing harmed parties for LMG resources. Presumably, the commission will be diverse, as areas with higher shares of renters also have higher shares of Black households. Members have an opportunity to use their diverse perspectives of and experience with intersectional systems of power to evaluate decisions pertaining to discriminatory practices. However, while this commission empowers residents’ agency in decision making, it simultaneously extracts unpaid labor, local expertise, and members’ time that could be spent elsewhere.

The law requires developers to include an assessment produced by the Anti-Displacement Tool for approval for public funding. ¹⁷² This tool evaluates proposed developments in three areas—real estate market pressure, housing stress, and gentrification risk ¹⁷³ —with indicators of high, medium, and low for each and an overall combined score of high, medium, or low risk for the project under consideration. The output includes area-wide profiles and project area profiles with compositional changes over time for several variables. ¹⁷⁴ The tool calculates the share of renters in the project area and what share of those can afford units at 50% of Area Median Income (AMI). The project units must be affordable to a majority of renters in high- and medium-risk areas, and the number of units must equal the share of cost-burdened households in the project area. The tool relies on Louisville’s 2024 Housing Needs Assessment data ¹⁷⁵ to establish the percentage of affordable units required in a project. More affordable units are required as risk increases. Positive recommendations require that projects in low-risk areas include at least 10% of units that are affordable to households earning 50% of AMI or below. Therefore, all projects seeking public funding must include affordable housing to be recommended. ¹⁷⁶ The requirements should change with each 5-year Housing Needs Assessment.

The tool relies on quarterly real estate data, ¹⁷⁷ such as asking rents at block group and market area geographies alongside the Housing Needs Assessment, conducted every 5 years, reflecting an awareness of changing cumulative impacts that may vary by project place over time. This may help capture intergenerational risks, but 5-year assessment cycles, aligned with policy timelines, may be too infrequent to address external shocks that disproportionately impact Black households. IntEJ emphasizes that time is experienced unevenly across minoritized groups and age cohorts (the intersection of age, time, and place). Thus, more frequent assessments and adaptive governance structures are likely necessary to respond to the urgent and uneven challenges faced by impacted communities.

The tool’s use of a place-based composite risk measure aligns with methods used in cumulative impact and risk assessments, allowing consideration of how populations are affected by overlapping systemic inequalities (intersectionality). Although federal law prohibits using race directly in funding decisions, place is often used as a proxy to address racialized disparities. By including measures of place-based racial demographic change and displacement risk, the tool may offer greater protection to communities where these risks intersect.

The law was originally drafted to protect historically Black neighborhoods facing disinvestment and environmental harm, whose hard-earned assets are threatened by predatory investment. The original draft intended to address multiple forms of justice—reparative, procedural, and distributive—for Black residents thought to be at most risk of displacement. However, the final version that passed applies to the entire city. ¹⁷⁸ This policy serves all residents equally and is attentive to some form of distributive justice; however, this assumes cumulative impacts uniformly affect all communities. The empirical record proves otherwise. Applying the law to the entire city means limited resources originally intended for Louisville’s historically Black neighborhoods will likely have a diluted impact across the city.

The law places responsibility for evaluating development impacts on developers and local officials, rather than on residents at risk of displacement. This approach parallels the logic of the precautionary principle ¹⁷⁹ where benefits and safety must be proven before approval, placing the burden on project proponents and funders. This is an aspect of distributive justice that shifts burdens of proof and time onto those in power. IntEJ warns against focusing on one form of justice at the expense of others. Thus, policymakers must assess whether implementation addresses the full scope of injustices and cumulative impacts of racialized land use, as intended by the law’s advocates.