The environmental justice movement contends that people of color and the poor are exposed to greater environmental risks than are whites and wealthier individuals. The movement charges that this disparity is due in part to racism and classism in the siting of environmental risks, the promulgation of environmental laws and regulations, the enforcement of environmental laws, and the attention given to the cleanup of polluted areas.' To support the first charge-that the siting of waste dumps, polluting factories, and other locally undesirable land uses (LULUs) has been .racist and classist-advocates for environmental justice have cited more than a dozen studies analyzing the relationship between neighborhoods' socioeconomic characteristics and the number of LULUs they host. The studies demonstrate that those neighborhoods in which LULUs are located have, on average, a higher percentage of racial minorities and are poorer than non-host communities. 2 That research does not, however, establish that the host communities were disproportionately minority or poor at the time the sites were selected. Most 1385 1994] 60. The GAO gives the dates repeated in the text as the dates on which the landfills were "established." The GAO never defined what it meant by "established," but conversations with regulators indicate that the sites began to operate as offsite disposal facilities in those years.

Cities across the United States that have considerable vacant land are debating whether to foster community gardens on that land, while cities with land shortages are debating when to replace gardens with other uses. Meanwhile, many cities are looking for new ways to finance green spaces. Little empirical evidence about the neighborhood impacts of community gardens is available, however, to inform the debate or to help cities design financing schemes. This article estimates the impact of community gardens on neighborhood property values, using rich data for New York City and a difference-in-difference specification of a hedonic regression model. We find that gardens have significant positive effects, especially in the poorest neighborhoods. Higher-quality gardens have the greatest positive impact. Copyright 2008 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association

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