Regional Equity and Smart Growth: Opportunities for Advancing Social and Economic Justice in America

Regional Equity and Smart Growth: Opportunities for Advancing Social and Economic Justice in America This paper was written by Angela Glover Blackwell and Radhika K. Fox of PolicyLink1and commissioned by the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities*. It is part Translation Paper of a series sponsored by the Funders’ Network to translate the impact of sprawling development #1 patterns and urban disinvestment on our communities and environment and to highlight the opportunities that could be created by smarter growth policies and practices. A previous edition, Edition also written by PolicyLink** and released by the Funders’ Network in 1999, focused on issues #2 of social equity and smart growth. It can be downloaded from the Funders’ Network website. Other issues addressed in the series of translation papers include air quality, energy, water, community development, arts, health, biodiversity, children and families, education, aging, transportation, agriculture, civic participation, open space, and workforce development. Abstract ince the post World War II era, the PolicyLink has learned over the past six Snation’s dominant development pattern years working to advance regional equity. has been characterized by the outward At its core, regional equity seeks to ensure movement of jobs, population, investment that individuals and families in all capital, and opportunity from cities and communities can participate in and older suburbs to the fringes benefit from economic of metropolitan areas, a growth and activity pattern commonly referred throughout the to as sprawl. One troubling metropolitan region— consequence of this including access to high- metropolitan performing schools, decent * The Funders’ Network works decentralization is the affordable housing located to strengthen funders’ abilities to isolation of low-income in attractive support organizations working communities and residents neighborhoods, living to build more livable wage jobs, and proximity communities through smarter of color in neighborhoods growth policies and practices. that lack the economic to public transit and For more information, visit opportunities, services, and important amenities, such www.fundersnetwork.org. social networks critical for as supermarkets and parks. full participation in society. This paper begins by ** PolicyLink is a national This condition is a result of discussing the emergence nonprofit research, public planning and and evolution of the communications, capacity development policies that regional equity concept building, and advocacy have provided powerful incentives for and its use by diverse groups across the organization dedicated to suburban growth, at the expense of central country. Then, a framework for action is advancing policies to achieve cities, older suburbs, rural communities, presented which includes four arenas for economic and social equity and their low-income residents. Until advancing regional equity: living near based on the wisdom, voice, regional opportunity; linking to regional and experience of local relatively recently, the interplay between constituencies. PolicyLink is regional development patterns and opportunity; promoting equitable public based in Oakland, Calif., with inequality/inequity has not been widely investment; and making all neighborhoods an additional office in New addressed by social justice advocates nor stable, healthy, and livable. The paper York City. For more has it been deeply embedded in the search concludes with a survey of resources information, visit for solutions. This is beginning to change. needed to deepen and strengthen the www.policylink.org. This translation paper reflects what growing regional equity movement. © Copyright 2004 by the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities patterns, are systematically maintaining Introduction: separate and unequal school systems across Equal Opportunity metropolitan regions. in the 21st Century The same dynamic is at work in housing. While housing discrimination has been outlawed, housing today is starkly divided 2004 marked the 50th anniversary of by race and income. Historically, the Brown v. Board of Education, the historic Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Supreme Court ruling that advanced the restricted loans on a racial basis. It doctrine that separate is not equal in public supported and encouraged the movement education. This landmark decision is a of middle-class, white households to the cornerstone of civil rights laws that seek full suburbs, moving population and resources inclusion and participation for all residents out of central cities.5 Current state and of the United States.2 The Brown decision local practices continue to reinforce these opened an important door to opportunity regional disparities. For instance, suburban for the nation’s children of color and helped jurisdictions often enact exclusionary land usher in a full-fledged struggle for inclusion use policies (such as requiring expensive in other important areas—most notably multi-car garages or allowing only single- voting, employment, and housing. family homes on large lots) that make it Reflecting on the past 50 years, it’s clear very difficult for lower-income families to that, despite impressive gains, the promise find places to live in newer developments. of the Brown decision—and what it Low-income people are stuck and signaled for America—remains concentrated in disinvested communities, unfulfilled. Because of Brown, White flight to the suburbs coincided which are more likely to be located in urban segregation in public schools is with the Brown decision, undercutting centers and older, declining, inner-ring illegal. Yet segregation and what could have been a monumental suburbs. One telling indicator of this inequality continue. In step forward in the struggle for equality decline is the proliferation of vacant and metropolitan Boston, for for people of color. We must integrate a abandoned properties. For example, in the example, seven in ten white regional perspective more completely city of Detroit, there are over 50,000 vacant students attend schools in the into the civil rights agenda. and abandoned properties.6 Concentrated outer suburbs that are over 90 — Wade Henderson, Leadership poverty is high in many urban percent white, while almost communities, and poverty rates are rising in Conference on Civil Rights eight in ten African American older suburbs. The number of people living and Latino students attend in suburban areas with high poverty schools in the city of Boston or in one of concentrations shot up by more than 121 the urbanized satellite cities.3 In the state percent from 1980-2000.7 of California, the problem of critically overcrowded schools disproportionately While laws have been established to affects students of color who attend urban promote equal employment, real access to schools. Seventy-one percent of California’s jobs has diminished as employers have most severely overcrowded schools are moved out of older urban areas to suburban located in large cities. Within these office parks. As of 1996, only 16 percent of schools, 90.4 percent are students of color jobs in the average metropolitan area were (68.2 percent Latino, 11.9 percent African within three miles of the central business American, 7 percent Asian).4 As the more district.8 The challenge of regional access to affluent members of our society move out jobs and services is further exacerbated due of central cities and older suburbs, public to limited public transit options, as public investments in schools follow. Settlement policy and funding continues to favor patterns, and the development decisions investments in roads over other and public policies that support these transportation options. 2 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities Regional growth and development patterns opportunity, linking people to regional also affect people’s health. A recent study opportunity, promoting equitable public conducted in the lower-income, African investment, and making all neighborhoods American community of Harlem, N.Y., stable, healthy, and livable—to realize the found that 25.5 percent of the children have vision of regional equity; and asthma, compared to the national average of III. The Way Forward surveys the resources 6 percent.9 As a hub for regional movement needed to deepen and strengthen the of people and goods in New York, the growing regional equity movement and Harlem community has a heavy strengthen alliances with important partners, concentration of diesel bus and truck traffic, such as those advocating for smarter choices and the tiny particles in diesel exhaust are about how communities grow. thought to be a serious asthma trigger. Clearly, many low-income communities and people of color are now isolated in neighborhoods that lack good schools, jobs, I. The Concept, Appeal, basic services, and social networks. Until and Use of Regional Equity relatively recently, the relationship between regional development patterns and inequality/inequity had not been widely The previous discussion revealed how addressed by social justice advocates nor has regional development patterns impact nearly it been deeply embedded in the search for every arena of potential opportunity for low- solutions. Five years ago, in the first income people and communities of color. translation paper published by the Funders’ Current development patterns are not the Network, we asserted that development and natural result of the free

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