Surveying the Organizational Landscape of Urban Environmental Stewardship

Author: Anya M. Galli

Urban environmental stewardship exists at the intersection of environmental conservation, environmental movements and civic engagement in US cities. It is carried out by diverse range of actors including community coalitions, environmental groups, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) has surveyed these groups in cities across the US to understand better the types of stewardship in which they engage, how they connect with one another, and how they have evolved within the cities in which they operate. 

My upcoming talk at the PSE Workshop on April 8, titled “Understanding the Organizational Landscape of Urban Environmental Stewardship: the STEW-MAP Philadelphia Survey” will provide an overview of the survey methods, research process, and preliminary findings from the STEW-MAP Philadelphia project. In particular, I will focus on the ways in which a survey of this type can be conducted so as to produce useful knowledge to stewardship groups while providing a scientifically sound source of data for social scientists. 

The STEW-MAP surveys being conducted in cities across the US are a fantastic example of actionable social science research that is useful to stakeholders and scholars alike. STEW-MAP provides up-to-date geographical and organizational data to the public in the form of network diagrams and interactive maps. Individual stewards, informal environmental groups, and larger organizations alike can access and leverage these tools in their work in their local communities. At the same time, researchers have used STEW-MAP data to analyze the networks, organizational structure, and impacts of urban environmental stewardship groups in the context of social science literature on local environmentalism, social movements, and civic engagement (see e.g. Fisher, Campbell, and Svendsen 2012; Connolly, Svendsen, Fisher, and Campbell 2013; Westphal et al. 2014).

But these STEW-MAP outcomes only tell part of the story. The research planning and survey administration phases of these projects also provide opportunities to understand how, where, and when stewardship groups connect with one another. Before surveys were distributed in Philadelphia, the research team spent months tracking down organizational contacts and creating a master list of stewardship groups and organizations in the city. Prior to this project, no comprehensive list existed. Given that local groups tend to be under-represented in non-profit directories, the master list itself is an important and useful tool that can help stewardship groups as they work to “conserve, manage, monitor, restore, advocate for, and educate the public about a wide range of issues related to sustaining the local environment” (Fisher, Campbell, and Svendsen 2012).

My talk at the PSE Workshop on April 8 will focus on the process of conducting the STEW-MAP Survey in Philadelphia. Preliminary findings and comparisons with other STEW-MAP cities will also be reviewed. I hope you can join us!

Anya M. Galli is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Graduate Fellow in the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland.