UofL professor to discuss land use and ‘poverty traps’

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Could President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 launch of the “War on Poverty” have been more successful if it had included land use and environmental policies?

University of Louisville law and urban studies professor Tony Arnold thinks so.

In an Oct. 14 talk, “The War on Poverty (50 Years Later) and Resilient Communities,” he will discuss the connection between land use policies and poverty. The free, public talk at noon in Room 275 at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law is part of the Boehl Distinguished Lecture Series in Land Use Policy.

“President Johnson visited Inez, Kentucky, in 1964 because it was one of the poorest areas in the nation,” said Arnold.

“Poverty still persists in Kentucky and throughout the U.S. Unfortunately, our poverty policies gave too little attention to how social and economic conditions and environmental and land use conditions together create ‘poverty traps.’ We should be paying attention to connections between society and the environment if we are to build the resilience of low-income communities,” Arnold said.

Arnold is the Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use and also holds a position in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs in UofL’s College of Arts and Sciences. He is an expert in land use and a proponent of adaptive governance—the flexible use of diverse policy options at many levels to help communities and nature adapt to changing conditions and sudden surprises, like flooding, storms, drought and urban heat islands.