Neighborhood Conditions Profoundly Affect the Environmental Literacy of Urban Youth

Neighborhood conditions — from tree cover to economic stress — influence urban teens’ environmental awareness and actions in myriad ways, according to a Yale School of the Environment-led study.

The study, recently published in the journal Cities, confirms the significant role that a  community plays in shaping young people’s understanding of and engagement with environmental issues, and adds to the growing body of evidence that environmental literacy is not shaped solely by school-based learning but is also affected by the social and ecological context of children’s daily lives via informal learning.

“Having grown up in Philadelphia, I remain acutely aware of how both early childhood experiences can promote, while infrastructure delinquencies can hinder, youth’s connection to nature in urban environments,” said Nyeema Harris, the Knobloch Family Associate Professor of Wildlife and Land Conservation and lead author of the study.  “Perhaps the most notable result that affirmed the importance of park accessibility was that youth participants exhibited a stronger sense of place the closer they resided to urban parks in Detroit.”

Environmental literacy has become increasingly important as young people face intensifying climate and health-related challenges. Yet, few studies have explored how local context, especially neighborhood-level factors, may help or hinder its development.

Participants, recruited through the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program and the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, took part in a survey designed to assess their baseline environmental literacy.

Participants, recruited through the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program and the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, took part in a survey designed to assess their baseline environmental literacy.

“We represented environmental literacy as a composite variable to capture various dimensions of its complexity. Specifically, we included two metrics for a sense of place: (i.e., place identity and place dependency) as well as ecological knowledge, empathy towards wildlife, and research competencies,”  Harris said.

That survey data was then spatially linked with neighborhood-level indicators, including socio-demographic information from the U.S. Census, proximity to green spaces, and the presence of environmental hazards such as industrial pollution. The target participants were sixth- through eighth-grade middle school students in the Detroit Metro.

Researchers also hosted community conversations at the Michigan Science Center and Belle Isle Nature Center.

Youth living in neighborhoods with greater income inequality, lower educational attainment, and less green space were less likely to score highly on measures of environmental literacy. In contrast, young people from neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic status and greater access to nature generally demonstrated a higher level of environmental knowledge and undertook more pro-environmental behaviors.

“Though I am not surprised, it is very interesting to see that our study confirmed that social determinants, including educational attainment and housing burden, were among the strongest predictors of environmental literacy in our participant pool,” said the study’s co-author, Germar González  ’ 24 MESc,  who is  now a conservation program specialist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

The research team found that even when students attended the same schools, the neighborhood conditions of where they lived played an independent role in shaping environmental literacy outcomes — highlighting the importance of urban planning to facilitate connectedness to nature.

“Nature positively impacts people, and proximity to parks can influence environmental literacy. But it doesn’t have to be a profound wilderness experience, even simple access to a corner park or a backyard sit area can benefit physical and mental health,” said Stephen Vrla, a study co-author and former environmental educator at the Detroit Zoological Society.  

The study’s findings could lead to opportunities to rethink environmental education in urban communities, the researchers noted.

“We were very thoughtful in our assessment of potential correlates of environmental literacy by incorporating social, economic, and environmental variables,” Harris said. “Now that we have established a baseline, the next step is to determine what educational interventions can be used to improve environmental literacy among urban youth.”

The research team from Harris’ Applied Wildlife Ecology (AWE) Lab collaborated with the education department of the Detroit Zoological Society to develop an experiential learning curriculum called Wildlife Neighbors. The curriculum is designed to engage youth in the Detroit Metropolitan Area with hands-on scientific inquiry using data from a multi-year camera survey conducted in urban parks across Detroit.

The program consists of learning modules to guide participants through the scientific method, allowing them to explore local wildlife and environmental issues by analyzing real-world data from their city.

“We created a research curriculum where students could use data from trail cameras in Detroit parks to ask and answer their own research questions about local wildlife,” said Vrla. “This gives young people access to research experiences they might not otherwise have.”

With plans to continue and expand their research in this area, the authors also are calling for more community-based environmental education initiatives tailored to urban youth's specific needs and assets.

“If policymakers, urban planners, and educators adopt equity-driven approaches that prioritize access to environmental knowledge and natural spaces in underserved areas, we can reasonably expect an increase in environmental literacy among urban youth,” González said. “This, in turn, has the potential  to broaden participation and diversity in environmental science and conservation, fields where increased diversity is urgently needed.”

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants AISL-2153843 and IOS-2140322.