Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Climate and environmental infrastructure investments are increasingly prioritizing Justice 40 communities — largely low-income communities of color that have not historically benefited from these investments — in Los Angeles, statewide in California, and around the United States. If green gentrification accompanies these investments and leads to displacement of the very communities they are meant to benefit, this will be a massive policy failure as well as a moral failure and the loss of an opportunity to use necessary investments in climate and environmental resilience to redress historical injustices. Can we change the narrative of green gentrification in time for climate justice?
Bio: Jon Christensen teaches and conducts multidisciplinary research at UCLA focusing on equity and the environment, strategic environmental communication, and journalism, media, and storytelling. He is an adjunct assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Luskin Center for Innovation, and Center for Digital Humanities at UCLA. He is a founder of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies in the IoES, editor of LENS Magazine, and a producer of ‘Earth Focus,’ a documentary series produced in collaboration with PBS SoCal. He is also a partner and strategic adviser at Stamen Design, a National Design Award-winning interactive design and technology firm specializing in mapping, data visualization, and strategic communications.
Jon was executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, an interdisciplinary center for research, teaching, new media, and journalism at Stanford University before coming to UCLA. He has been an environmental journalist and science writer for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Nature, High Country News, and many other newspapers, magazines, journals, and radio and television shows. Jon was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford in 2002-2003 and a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University in 2003-2004, before returning to Stanford to work on a Ph.D. in environmental history and the history of science.
Jon is co-chair of the board of directors of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a board member of the Los Angeles River State Park Partners, a founder of the LA Parks Alliance, and on the advisory councils of the Indigenous Law Center at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.
Climate and environmental infrastructure investments are increasingly prioritizing Justice 40 communities — largely low-income communities of color that have not historically benefited from these investments — in Los Angeles, statewide in California, and around the United States. If green gentrification accompanies these investments and leads to displacement of the very communities they are meant to benefit, this will be a massive policy failure as well as a moral failure and the loss of an opportunity to use necessary investments in climate and environmental resilience to redress historical injustices. Can we change the narrative of green gentrification in time for climate justice?
Bio: Jon Christensen teaches and conducts multidisciplinary research at UCLA focusing on equity and the environment, strategic environmental communication, and journalism, media, and storytelling. He is an adjunct assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Luskin Center for Innovation, and Center for Digital Humanities at UCLA. He is a founder of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies in the IoES, editor of LENS Magazine, and a producer of ‘Earth Focus,’ a documentary series produced in collaboration with PBS SoCal. He is also a partner and strategic adviser at Stamen Design, a National Design Award-winning interactive design and technology firm specializing in mapping, data visualization, and strategic communications.
Jon was executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, an interdisciplinary center for research, teaching, new media, and journalism at Stanford University before coming to UCLA. He has been an environmental journalist and science writer for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Nature, High Country News, and many other newspapers, magazines, journals, and radio and television shows. Jon was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford in 2002-2003 and a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University in 2003-2004, before returning to Stanford to work on a Ph.D. in environmental history and the history of science.
Jon is co-chair of the board of directors of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a board member of the Los Angeles River State Park Partners, a founder of the LA Parks Alliance, and on the advisory councils of the Indigenous Law Center at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.
