While Lynn White’s 1967 article, The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, ignited a firestorm of controversy regarding the relationship between religion, particularly Christianity, and the environment, the testing of White’s hypothesis, that Christians are anthropocentric and anti-environment, has produced results that are significantly less clear. Additionally, little research has been conducted with experts in the field of Christianity, the clergy, adding to already significant gaps in the literature. The current research study helps fill that gap by providing the perspective of clergy on the relationship between Christianity and the environment. This qualitative study uses in-depth interviews to assess the topics of importance to members of the clergy within the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan region as well as their professional perspective of the relationship between religion and the environment. The results indicate that community is of great importance to leaders of faith-based organizations, but stewardship is also a primary foundation of the church. While no support was found for White’s hypothesis, a willingness to learn and a need for expertise on environmental issues was identified. In this regard, environmental professionals, specifically landscape architects, have been identified as the ideal group to provide the bridge between faith-based organizations and the environment.

The United States has a long history of providing public parks and amenities, especially for children. Unfortunately, children today are spending less time in public parks, less time getting physical activity and more time being indoors and sedentary. While multiple factors may be responsible for this lack of activity, multiple researchers have found the availability of parks is a significant influence on the physical activity levels of children as well as on the occurrence of obesity related illness. Public parks are ideal locations for children to get physical activity, however they are not always equitably distributed within communities. Income and race/ethnicity especially are common variables found to impact availability of parks. Such socioeconomic variables typically have an impact on the availability of public parks within a community. Such variables may also impact the quality of the parks provided. A case study of Scottsdale, Arizona was conducted analyzing the availability of public parks within the City between the years of 1990 and 2000 and the current quality of the parks. Statistical analysis and observation were utilized to assess the amount of park space available (in acres) and the quality of the parks in comparison to selected socioeconomic variables including ethnicity, income and total percent housing type (single family or multi-family). All analysis was conducted using U.S. Census data from the years 1990 and 2000 and was at the tract level. The results of the analysis indicate that in contrast to the initial hypothesis and past research, within the City of Scottsdale, lower income neighborhoods actually have more public park space available to them than higher income neighborhoods. Between 1990 and 2000 the difference in park space between the lowest and highest income quartiles increased considerably, approximately 230% over the ten years. The quality analysis results indicate that the overall quality of parks is slightly higher in the highest income neighborhoods, which also have no parks that could be considered of poor quality. Given the atypical results of this analysis, further research is necessary to better understand the impacts of socioeconomic characteristics on park, especially regarding children.