It takes a region.

• Author: Blackwell, Angela Glover

INTRODUCTION

American cities, reeling from the impact of relentless suburbanization, have taken a beating in recent decades. So, too, have many African Americans who fifty years ago, hoping to build a better life, left the South in large numbers and began settling in these cities. Recent dramatic demographic changes in cities and older suburbs brought on by immigration and shifting settlement patterns have added a new complexity to the regional picture. (1)

While low-income communities and communities of color suffer the most negative consequences of regional inequity, the impacts of uneven and unhealthy development patterns create widespread problems. Auto-oriented sprawl is causing long, crowded commutes and more driving, which leads to worsening air pollution and worry among single-parent and two-worker families about stealing parental time from children. Farmland and open space are being steadily eaten up by the continuous spread of businesses and housing beyond the boundaries of the central city and inner suburbs into more distant rural areas.

Growing awareness regarding the fallout of sprawl is signaling a new round of debates regarding the future of metropolitan regions. This debate is being taken up by groups with diverse interests ranging from advocates for smart growth who see revitalization of cities and older suburbs as a way to contain sprawl and preserve open space, to mayors and county administrators who wish to connect cities to the growing prosperity of surrounding regions, to advocates for equal opportunity and full inclusion who see a direct connection between growing inequity and regional development patterns.

Does the policy agenda emerging from the push for smart growth reach the needs of people of color being left behind by metropolitan development patterns? Is something more or different required to achieve regional equity? After exploring these and other questions, this article proposes equitable development as an action and policy agenda that can align multiple interests into a sustainable movement for positive change.

1. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

   Increasingly, people's life chances are determined by where they live. (2)

   One of the more troubling urban trends of the '70s and '80s was the concentration of poverty in America's inner cities. (3) During these decades, as whites continued their march from cities to the suburbs, middle-class African Americans spread out within cities to areas that had previously been inaccessible because of discrimination. (4) Surprisingly, the expanded housing opportunities that had been sought under the banner of racial progress turned into racial disaster for many African Americans left behind in once vibrant, economically integrated neighborhoods that had turned into communities in which almost everyone was poor.

   This resulting isolation of poor African Americans from the more politically sophisticated and connected African Americans made these neighborhoods and residents extremely vulnerable to neglect and the full impact of discrimination and racism. (5) Further, the likelihood of obtaining good jobs diminished as those living in concentrated poverty became increasingly isolated from natural job networks--the connection to people who are working and can provide information about and access to job opportunities. (6) Adding to this mix was the steady decline in inner-city public schools and the growing trade in drugs as legitimate work opportunities disappeared. (7)

   This period also ushered in an ascendance of African Americans into positions of political power, especially in cities. Unfortunately, this was accompanied by an exodus of retail establishments, business headquarters, and traditional civic leaders to the suburbs. Adding to this the devastation caused by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, cities were left in decline, with shrinking tax bases and an abundance of residents requiring expensive services. (8) By the late 1980s sociologists and others were discussing the emergence of a "permanent underclass" and, despite the heroic efforts of local leaders and community builders, conditions caused by persistent poverty and high unemployment became self-reproducing. (9) Whole cities began to be thought of as unsafe, poverty ridden, and undesirable. Naturally, many who could move to places with less strain and stigma did just that, further exacerbating the situation.

   Just outside of these declining cities was robust expansion into the suburbs: spacious houses, new state-of-the-art school buildings, numerous strip malls, shiny enclosed shopping centers, and miles and miles of highways connecting suburbanites to city jobs by tearing through urban neighborhoods and winding into the steadily sprawling suburban reaches. More recently, these highways completely bypass the cities and connect suburb to suburb as new business centers develop in suburban locations. Was all of this just the invisible hand of the free market?

   Sprawl and regional inequity are not natural results of a free market economy. Rather, they are direct results of public policies that have provided incentives for suburban growth at the expense of central cities and older suburbs and their low-income residents. It was all made possible with the vast assistance of federal laws, policies, and resources, such as the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, which provided billions for roads and little for public transit; the Federal Housing Administration ("FHA"), (10) which insured low-interest mortgages to white, middle-class households (for twenty years these mortgages were offered on a race-restricted basis); and "Urban Renewal," which in the name of downtown revitalization physically divided and damaged many inner-city neighborhoods. (11) Complementing these policies were other developments that helped advance the rapid decline of cities, such as the beginning of mass-produced suburban tract houses, like Levittown, which made it cheaper for families to buy homes in the suburbs than to rent apartments in the city; continuing racial discrimination in education, housing, and employment, which kept many African Americans from making progress and produced extreme racial tension that laid the foundation for the urban riots of the 1960s, further damaging the image of cities. (12)

   By the mid-1980s racial inequality in the United States was so deeply embedded in housing patterns that literally where one lived could stand as a proxy for life opportunity. The past twenty years have seen only a further solidification of this phenomenon. In communities of inner-city, concentrated poverty, the children attend schools that fail to equip them with the skills needed to become contributing members of society. Adults in these communities often lack the skills required for good jobs, and those that have the skills too often find that the jobs they could get are too distant from their homes, a situation made worse by the absence of public transit. In Sprawl as a Civil Rights Issue." A Mayor's Reflections, William A. Johnson, Jr., Mayor of Rochester, New York, notes that the City of Cleveland contains 80% of the metropolitan area's African-American poor while 80% of the entry-level jobs are in the suburbs. (13) In fact, data from the 2000 Census reveals that, though there was a slight reduction in the physical isolation of African Americans from jobs, this group "remains the most segregated racial/ethnic group from jobs." (14)

   The criminal activity and the poor relationships with law enforcement cause many young men in these communities to have criminal records, which further decrease opportunities for meaningful employment. (15) There is also a growing awareness that these neighborhoods contribute to poor health as well, based on the absence of access to fresh fruits and vegetables, because there are no full-service grocery stores in the neighborhoods, the presence of abandoned toxic sites, and over-exposure to conditions and substances that are asthma triggers. (16) In essence, development patterns have continued extreme inequality for poor people of color in this country, even as the passage of civil rights laws opened doors that allowed for extraordinary progress and accomplishments by many people of color who managed to overcome or live outside of these neglected areas.

2. OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHANGE EMERGE

   Fortunately, a number of factors that are simultaneously emerging could open a space for addressing the inequality that has been associated with the steady sprawling of the past fifty years. These trends include: the changing demographics including large numbers of immigrants entering cities and older suburbs; a reduction in the numbers of people living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty; growing poverty in the suburbs; a renewed interest in living in cities on the part of young...