This article addresses a fundamental issue in urban and environmental education (EE): the sociopolitical savvy and everyday expertise embodied by city-dwelling Black children are seldom regarded as core indices of learning. While there is important scholarship focused on frameworks for expanding EE, very little of this work engages with Black city-dwelling children's place-based knowledge. Consequently, this study analyzes data taken from an 18-month project conducted in a mid-size city. I show how fourth- and fifth-grade Black children conceived of the quality of air, land, and water, often in ways that articulated blurred boundaries between scientific and sociopolitical phenomena.
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