Seizing Opportunities for Inclusion: Smart Growth, Race and Regionalism

1
Seizing Opportunities for Inclusion Smart
Growth, Race and Regionalism

• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  
• Moritz College of Law
• Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  Ethnicity
• The Ohio State University
• http//www.kirwaninstitute.org
• Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable
  Communities
• Annual Conference March 7-9, 2005

2
Key Questions

• What are the critical issues impacting our
  regions today?
• Sprawling Development and Racial or Regional
  Inequity
• What are the tensions surrounding equity-based
  regionalism (equitable development) and smart
  growth? What are the areas of cooperation?
• How can regionalism be structured to address
  issues of equity?
• How can smart growth think in terms of regional
  equity?

3
The Challenge Persistent Racial Disparities
and Inequity

• Although racial attitudes are improving steadily,
  racial disparities persist on every level, such
  as
• Income, poverty, employment, health, crime,
  incarceration, education, assets, and housing
• This national racial disparity is reflected in
  our regions

4
What Causes Regional (Racial Inequity)? Sprawl,
Fragmentation and Spatial Racism

• Sprawl (Dysfunctional and Unfair Policies)
• Sprawl is the byproduct of unfair and
  dysfunctional land use policies that move
  opportunity (jobs, housing, people, money) to the
  suburbs and exurbs
• Fragmentation
• Regions carved into many local governments that
  work to keep out low income residents
• Spatial Racism
• Racist policies and laws that disadvantage inner
  city communities of color
• There is nothing natural about the segregation in
  American cities
• The result of deliberate policies and actions
• Two factors working together
• 1) Racially motivated policies and
• 2) Policies that produce racially disparities

5
Sprawl Magnifies Regional (Racial) Inequity

• By pushing good jobs, stable housing, and
  educational opportunities into the suburbs,
  sprawl (or inequitable development) creates
  segregated, impoverished areas of the central
  city and inner-ring suburbs that are locked off
  from meaningful opportunities

• By 2000 the suburbs
• contained over 2/3 of our
• metropolitan population
• Only 1/3 remained in the
• central cities

6
Example of a National PhenomenonSprawling
Growth and Segregation in the Cleveland Region
Suburban and Exurban growth has occurred
throughout the Cleveland Region but African
Americans remain concentrated and segregated in
the central city.
Population Change 1990-2000
African American Population 2000
7
Example of a National PhenomenonSprawling
Growth and Segregation in the Baltimore Region
African Americans are segregated from sprawling
growth areas in the Baltimore Region.
8
Fragmentation Creates Barriers to Opportunity and
Produces Racial Inequity

• Fragmentation is growing in Americas regions
• In 1942 24,500 U.S. municipalities and special
  districts
• In 2002 54,481 U.S. municipalities and special
  districts
• Fragmentation facilitates race and wealth
  disparity through territorial segregation and
  fiscal separation of
• Zoning
• Planning
• Taxation
• Education
• Public Services
• Control is what matters in respect to equity

9
Understanding Sprawl and Fragmentation

• Traditionally environmental advocates have
  focused on the efforts on critiquing sprawl
• The impact of sprawl is clearly critiqued but
  less attention has been paid to issues of
  fragmentation
• Social justice advocates have focused more on the
  issues of fragmentation
• Political fragmentation is the cause of many
  barriers to opportunity for low income people
  (especially people of color)
• These are distinct issues but may work together
  to produce environmental degradation and social
  inequity

10
What is Enforcing Inequity? Spatial Racism

• We have seen a move away from explicit legal
  racism to a racial (also class and gender)
  hierarchy that is enforced through
  institutional/structural means
• Structures act as filters, creating cumulative
  barriers
• de jure segregation ? de facto segregation
• Inequity arises as disenfranchised groups are
  left out of the democratic process

11
Policies Enforcing InequityHistorical
Government Role

• If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is
  necessary that properties shall continue to be
  occupied by the same social and racial classes.
  A change in social or racial occupancy generally
  contributes to instability and a decline in
  values.
• Excerpt from the 1947 FHA underwriting manual

12
Policies Enforcing Inequity Contemporary
Government Role

• Spatial Racism is not natural or neutral it
  results from government policies, such as
• Zoning laws prevent affordable housing in many
  suburbs
• Housing policies concentrate subsidized housing
• Municipalities subsidize the relocation of
  businesses out of the city
• Transportation spending favors highways,
  metropolitan expansion and urban sprawl
• Court decisions prevent metropolitan school
  desegregation
• School funding is tied to property taxes

13
Spatial Racism The Civil Rights Agenda for the
21st Century

• Space is how race plays out in American
  society-and the key to solving inequities in
  housing, transportation, education, and health
  careSprawl is the new face of Jim Crow. -- john
  powell
• Social and racial inequities are geographically
  inscribed
• There is a polarization between the rich and the
  poor that is directly related to the areas in
  which they live

14
How Does Sprawl, Fragmentation and Spatial Racism
Impact Communities of Color?

• Sprawl and fragmentation cause detrimental
  impacts to inner city communities of color in
  multiple areas.
• Education
• Disinvestment
• Economic Opportunity
• Housing Opportunity

15
Sprawl, Inequity Education
Produces Dysfunctional Schools
Structural Inequality
Institutional Arrangements
50 years after the Brown Decision, Americas
schools have re-segregated into affluent white
districts and poor under-funded African American
and Hispanic districts
16
Sprawl, Fragmentation and Disinvestment in
Communities of Color

• Decades of suburban flight have drained low
  income inner city neighborhoods of people,
  business and investment
• High vacancy rates and poor investment harms the
  quality of life for inner city residents and
  limits the resources (tax base) for low income
  communities

17
Sprawl, Inequity and Economic Opportunity

• A 2001 Brookings Institution study found a
  significant relationship between fragmentation
  and job decentralization in the 100 largest metro
  areas
• Job decentralization (or job sprawl) blocks
  access to employment for residents of the central
  city and inner-ring suburbs

Job Sprawl in Michigan
18
Sprawl, Inequity and Economic Opportunity

• Jobs have moved away from the labor pool in many
  metropolitan areas, making connecting job-seekers
  with jobs a challenge which is compounded by poor
  public transportation
• 40 of all suburban jobs cannot be reached by
  public transportation
• Public investment disproportionately favors
  highways over public transportation

19
Spatial MismatchJob Growth PublicTransit in
Baltimore

• The following map illustrates the mismatch
  between job growth and transit in Baltimore
• Recent research by the Brookings Institute found
  Job Sprawl to correlate with greater
  segregation for African Americans from employment
• Blacks are more geographically isolated from
  jobs in high job-sprawl areas regardless of
  region, metropolitan area size, and their share
  of metropolitan population.
• Job Sprawl and Spatial Mismatch for African
  Americans. Brookings Institute 2005

20
Sprawl, Fragmentation and Housing Opportunity

• Sprawl and Fragmentation reduce access to the
  housing market for low income residents
  (especially people of color)
• Suburban zoning regulations artificially drive up
  the cost of housing and do not allow enough
  rental housing
• New housing is unaffordable to low income
  residents and most people of color
• Disinvestment in the inner city reduces the asset
  value (wealth) of homeowners in inner city
  neighborhoods

21
Zoning and Housing Opportunity in Columbus, OH

• Suburban lot size requirements in the Columbus
  suburbs drive up the cost of housing
• As a result, over 90 of all new single-family
  homes built between 2000 and 2002 were not
  affordable to more than 75 of all African
  American and Hispanic households

22
The Cumulative Impact of Sprawl, Fragmentation
and Spatial Racism Opportunity Segregation

• The cumulative impact of sprawl, fragmentation
  and spatial racism work together to segregate low
  income residents from opportunities such as
• Good schools, meaningful employment, safe and
  stable neighborhoods
• This is opportunity segregation

23
An Example of Opportunity Segregation in
Pittsburgh

• Residential segregation is a proxy for
  segregation from opportunity such as..
• Jobs, well performing schools, services, child
  care and stable neighborhoods
• As seen in this example recent job opportunities
  are not growing in the African American
  communities
• This physical separation is a tremendous
  impediment to the 39 of African Americans with
  no automobile

Source State of Black Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh
Urban League
24
Potential Conflict (Tension) with Smart Growth
and Regional Equity

• Why is there not more cooperation between the
  social justice community (working toward equity)
  and the smart growth community?
• Several tensions exist which may undermine this
  relationship
• Will opening areas of opportunity increase
  sprawl?
• Does growth control close access to opportunity?
• Will regionalism dilute the power of communities
  of color?

25
Tensions Opening Access to Opportunity and
Increasing Sprawl
Chicagos Communities of High Opportunity (in
blue) are primarily in suburban areas.

• Areas of opportunity are often in the suburbs, is
  opening access to these areas going to increase
  sprawl and suburban growth?

26
Tensions Extreme Growth Control that Further
Limits Access to Opportunity

• Certain growth management tools will limit
  affordable housing in high opportunity
  communities
• Housing moratoriums
• Extreme large lot zoning
• Measures to block higher density development
• These policies alone will block access to
  opportunity for low income people and most people
  of color

27
An Example of Tension Conflict Over Smart Growth
and Equity in South Carolina

• Conflict over smart growth and equity in Richland
  County, SC
• Economically depressed South Richland has one of
  the highest rates of African American land
  ownership in the nation
• The community is concerned that smart growth
  policies (introducing large lot zoning) are being
  used to dispossess this African American
  community

Richland County, SC
28
An Example of Tension State Smart Growth Reform
Focusing on the Environment and Ignoring Equity
in the 1990s

• Currently and throughout the 1990s, many states
  have embraced smart growth measures
• However, a 1999 study by the American Planning
  Association found that urban redevelopment was
  lacking from most reforms and that planning laws
  focused more on conservation goals than on
  redevelopment
• In addition, only half of the state planning laws
  addressed housing issues affordable housing
  received little attention from most state land
  use reform
• --Source APA (1999) Planning Communities for
  the 21st Century http//www.planning.org/growings
  mart/pdf/planningcommunities21st.pdf

29
Tensions Regionalism and Minority Power Dilution

• Many communities of color have legitimate
  concerns about power dilution if regionalism in
  enacted
• For example, governmental consolidation (a form
  of regionalism) has not helped in addressing
  equity issues such as schools, housing and tax
  disparity
• Indianapolis Unigov
• Schools originally not addressed in consolidation
• Fragmented tax districts also maintained
• Political disenfranchisement of African American
  community diluted the Democratic voting block
  within the city
• The current mayor is seeking to expand the power
  of the Unigov due to recent fiscal crisis

30
Tensions Regionalism and Minority Power Dilution

• Minority representation
• Consolidation has resulted in a reduction in the
  concentration of African American voters, and in
  some cases, elected political representation
• Louisville
• Recent research has found suburban political
  interests (and development) to be dominating the
  political agenda at the expense of African
  American central city neighborhoods

31
How can we address these tensions?

• We must be deliberate in our actions and policies
  and explicitly address our common goals
• These two goals should not be treated as mutually
  exclusive, must address both
• Opening access to regional opportunity
• Curbing our dysfunctional patterns of growth
  (sprawl)

32
Potential Areas of Cooperation with Smart Growth
and Regional Equity

• Although small tensions exist between smart
  growth and equitable growth, significant areas of
  cooperation exist
• Equitable housing policies
• Implementing housing policies that are
  opportunity based (connecting people to
  opportunity), these are more likely to promote
  equity
• Removing subsidies and policies that promote
  sprawl and inner city disinvestment
• Equalizing the resource inequality between
  communities

33
What is Opportunity Based Housing? A Regional
Intervention to Support Equity

• Affordable housing must be deliberately and
  intelligently connected to high performing
  schools, sustainable employment, necessary
  transportation infrastructure, childcare, and
  institutions that facilitate civic and political
  activity
• Housing is a component of a larger set of
  interrelated structures that are both affected by
  housing and have impacts for the attainment of
  safe, stable housing

34
Housing Opportunities Lead to Equity

• Parents who have access to affordable housing
  have more money to spend on transportation
• More money spent on transportation provides them
  with access to a broader range of jobs
• A better job provides more money, which provides
  their children with better educational
  opportunities
• Well-fed children with stable housing will do
  better in school
• Having access to greater educational
  opportunities and doing better in school allows
  these children to achieve regular employment

35
Is Opportunity Based Housing a Smart Growth
Initiative?

• YES
• Affordable housing is a critical issue to smart
  growth and has implications beyond regional and
  racial equity
• Opportunity based housing would reduce inner
  city concentrated poverty and school inequity and
  encourage redevelopment and movement back into
  the cities
• Opportunity based housing would result in more
  affordable (and more dense) housing in suburban
  areas, resulting in less land consumption and
  environmental harm
• Opportunity based housing would connect more
  people to employment and reduce pressure on the
  regions transportation system

36
Ways to Deliberately Address Equity and
Environment

• Manage growth while assuring expansion of
  affordable housing opportunities in areas of
  opportunity
• Preferably through regional initiatives
• Federated regionalism to avoid minority power
  dilution in regionalism initiatives
• Federated Regionalism Approach
• Voting and representative strategies to assert
  minority rights
• Cumulative voting, decision-making bodies which
  allocate seats to assure minority representation
• Neighborhood control over allocation of resources
• Require a supermajority to approve regional
  actions

37
Regionalism Can Be Structured to Improve Regional
Equity

• Regionalism recognizes that todays economy is no
  longer locally focused infrastructure
  (transportation, utilities, etc.) and the labor
  market function on a regional level
• Similarly, key social justice concerns are being
  acted on by regional forces, such as
  fragmentation, segregation, and the concentration
  of poverty
• Neighborhoods and cities cannot solve social
  justice problems alone, or they will see their
  viability diminish relative to other parts of the
  region
• Regionalism acknowledges a Jurisdictional/Institut
  ional mismatch

Local Initiatives are NOT enough
38
What is regionalism?

• Regionalism a structural approach that
  emphasizes the region as the primary geographic
  unit determining the distribution of opportunity
  and resources
• Consequently the region is the best geographic
  entity to base some level of decision-making
• Can work to enforce inequity or improve equity,
  depending on the focus of regionalism
• What is the focus?
• Economic efficiency, fiscal efficiency,
  infrastructure efficiency, environmental quality,
  racial social equity
• These goals can work in concert or in conflict
• When goals are aligned to combat inequity,
  regionalism can be powerfully effective in
  addressing racial disparities

39
The Various Forms of Regionalism

• There are multiple regional strategies to address
  fragmentation, sprawl and inequity
• Regional Governance
• Annexation
• Mergers Consolidation
• Regional Functions
• Tax base (revenue) sharing
• Opening the regional housing market
• Regional land use control
• Regional Infrastructure
• Infrastructure related growth management

40
How Can Regionalism Improve Equity?

• By managing regional growth and reducing sprawl
  while prioritizing inner city growth
• By assuring affordable homes and apartments are
  available in the regions areas of opportunity
• By fixing the inequity in resources (such as
  taxes and government spending) in the region
• By fixing the inequity in public services and
  education available to low income communities
• By opening access to the regions job
  opportunities by providing better public
  transportation

41
Examples of Smart Growth or Regionalism that
Promotes Equity

• Housing Initiatives
• Inclusionary zoning, opportunity based housing,
  workforce housing
• Growth Control Initiatives
• Growth boundaries, growth management (that
  preserves affordable housing in areas of
  opportunity)
• Tax Sharing Initiatives
• Tax base sharing, income tax strategies
• Public Infrastructure Initiatives
• Reinvestment in existing communities
• Removing subsidies associated with sprawl
• Transportation Initiatives
• Equitable transportation spending, public transit
  investments
• Public Education Initiatives
• Regionalized school districts
• Reducing reliance of property taxes for schools

42
How Can Smart Growth Promote Regional Equity?

• Coalition building among communities of color and
  the smart growth movement, making equity
  initiatives (such as housing) the centerpiece of
  local and regional policy
• Supporting regionalism initiatives that promote
  equity
• Smart growth and equity can work in concert or
  conflict, support initiatives that do improve
  equity and the environment
• Examples of the environmental and equity goals
  working in concert
• Urban growth boundaries in Portland
• Revenue sharing in Minneapolis
• Michigans Fix it First Transportation Policies

43
Environment and Equity Working in Concert
Portland

• Anti-Sprawl Initiatives Portland

• Oregons land use policies redirect private
  sector investment back into the central city and
  older suburbs
• Improving opportunity in the central city
• What about housing affordability?
• The Portland region was one of the more
  affordable housing markets on the West Coast
  according to recent research by Wells Fargo

Urban Growth Boundary in the Pacific Northwest
Source University of Washington
44
Environment and Equity Working in Concert Twin
Cities

• Tax-Base Sharing Plans Minneapolis
• Fiscal regionalism
• Helps mitigate the resource disparity between
  central city and suburban communities
• Tax revenue sharing to avoid local conflict over
  expanded tax base
• Program covers 2.5 million people, seven counties
  and 2,000 local jurisdictions
• Appropriates approximately 40 of local
  commercial and industrial revenues back to a
  pool to be shared

45
Fiscal Policy as a Strategic Intervention

• Tax revenue sharing and other equitable taxation
  strategies are strategic interventions
• An intervention that creates change across
  multiple domains

46
Environment and Equity Working in Concert Fix
itFirst Policy in Michigan
Source Michigan Land Use Institute

• Michigans Fix it First
• State policy reform to redirect transportation
  spending back to existing roads
• Previous policy prioritized spending for new road
  projects, causing disinvestment in many urban
  areas like Detroit, leaving Michigan with the
  worst roads in the nation
• The new policy has curtailed almost two dozen
  road expansion projects (mostly in suburban
  Detroit)
• Spending can now be directed to repairing the
  congestion and quality of roads in Detroits
  urban areas
• How does this impact the environment and equity?
• Fewer unnecessary road expansion projects in
  undeveloped areas
• More equitable reinvestment back into inner city
  communities

47
How Can the Smart Growth Movement Target Policies
to Promote Equity?

• Make equity a primary goal in all your planning
  decisions
• Consider the equity impact of all decisions
• Be deliberate and make your goals (economy,
  environment, equity) work in concert, not
  conflict
• Adopt an equity-oriented approach to planning

48
Concluding Thoughts

• Need to be deliberate in our actions and policies
  in addressing the environment and equity
• We need to explicitly connect the goals of equity
  and environmentalism to make fair and healthy
  land use decisions
• Both inequity and environmental degradation have
  the same root causes (dysfunctional land use
  policies, fragmentation, spatial racism)
• Coalition building among communities of color and
  smart growth advocates can lead to fair and
  functional land use policy, as opposed to the
  unfair and dysfunctional policies that result in
  sprawl and associated opportunity segregation
  and environmental harm

49
Concluding Thoughts

• Ignoring the issues of equity will only assure
  conflict between the social justice and smart
  growth movement
• Regionalism provides the best platform to unite
  these concerns
• We must correct the existing policies that
  encourage sprawl, racial inequity
• We must address critical equity issues such as
  education, public infrastructure, affordable
  housing
• We must work to connect people with opportunity

50
For More Information Visit Us On-Line
http//www.kirwaninstitute.org