Urban soils provide a litany of services to people and serve as the foundation of all living things. However, when urban soils become polluted, they become a potential hazard, one that disproportionately harms communities of color and low-income populations. Contemporary soil contamination is a direct legacy of structural discrimination, shaped by historical policies such as redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and exclusionary zoning that concentrated older housing stock and industrial land uses in those same communities. Today, a lack of leverage, resources and power leave communities with few tools to remedy conditions, further compounding health disparities.

The long-term goals of this work are to improve equitable access to healthy soils and services that support climate-resilient futures, co-power partners to adopt evidence-based soil strategies, and train the future generation of scientists in community-engaged co-produced science

We strive to scale and implement a set of strategies co-produce soil priorities:

We Are: Centre for Applied Ecological Remediation, Communities for a Better Environment, Laboratory for Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Physicians for Social Responsibility – LA, TreePeople,UCLA, Watts Labor Community Action Committee