Description of Project

Table of Contents:

	Sprawl and Fragmentation: An Attack on the Promise of Civil Rights
	Smart Growth and Civil Rights
	Federated Regionalism:Achieving Equity throughout a Region
	The Racial Justice & Regional Equity Project

Sprawl and Fragmentation: An Attack on the Promise of Civil Rights

Urban sprawl has become a concern in metropolitan areas across the country. Managing development and protecting open spaces around urban and suburban areas is becoming a national priority. Success rates of ballot initiatives and referenda dealing with sprawl and related issues were as high as 84 percent out of 148 initiatives in 1998, 90 percent of the 102 in 1999, and 83 percent of the 209 in 2000, according to the Land Trust Alliance (www.lta.org). A Fall 2000 poll by the American Planning Association Institute of Certified Planners found that 78 percent of voters support a federal Smart Growth agenda, and 75 percent of voters support a presidential role in contending with urban growth. Smart growth and growth management movements have emerged largely to counter urban sprawl, and the related problems of traffic congestion, unattractive development, and environmental concerns.

Smart Growth and Civil Rights

Missing from much of the dialogue and action around smart growth is another concern: how sprawl has undermined the progress of civil rights efforts and impacted the lives of people of color and low-income people living largely in the urban core and inner-ring suburbs. Civil rights efforts have attempted to give voice to the needs of these communities, which have limited access to many opportunity structures, including affordable housing, good education, and adequate employment. While civil rights advocates have been working to break down barriers to opportunity, urban and suburban sprawl have worked to create new barriers. These barriers are more than figurative - jurisdictional fragmentation of urban and suburban communities has meant that housing, transportation, employment, and education opportunities are not equally available across a metropolitan area.

Federated Regionalism:
Achieving Equity throughout a Region

An effective regional equity strategy must be sensitive to the social justice issues associated with regional fragmentation, as well as concerns raised by communities of color over the related dilution of political strength and cultural identity. Pursuing both local, community-based efforts and region-wide policies in tandem are important for this reason. Increasing access to resources and opportunities must be a primary concern for communities of color, but equally important is building politically, socially, and economically strong urban communities. Such a combined strategy most effectively and directly addresses the detrimental effects of urban sprawl.

The Institute on Race & Poverty (IRP) calls a strategy that integrates regional policymaking with local governance "federated regionalism." It is based on the following premises:

1. Many important issues within the inner cities and older suburbs can only be adequately addressed at a regional level.
2. Some issues are of a local nature and more effectively addressed by local communities.

Federated regionalism advances both community-based and regional approaches by integrating the two strategies to most effectively achieve regional equity. Tensions may certainly exist between the interests of the white community, the black community, and other communities of color over how and whether to address regional concerns. Federated regionalism accepts these tensions and balances these concerns by placing at the forefront the need to achieve equity throughout the region, within urban communities and throughout metropolitan areas. Concerns raised by civil rights advocates and communities of color are a central focus of this approach.

The Institute on Race & Poverty's Racial Justice & Regional Equity Project (RJRE)

The Institute on Race & Poverty's Racial Justice & Regional Equity Project (RJRE) advocates a structure for the regional reform process, so that communities of color can engage meaningfully in the regional equity debate, balancing access to opportunity with political and cultural identity. The goals of the project can be summarized as follows:

• Reframe the regionalism dialogue in a way that includes the needs of communities of color and identifies ways to address traditional community mistrust of regionalism efforts.
• Develop specific strategies to engage communities of color in regional policies while determining ways to ensure that both the policies and process remain sensitive to community issues.
• Enhance the ability of communities of color to make their voices heard in framing issues and influencing public discourse about metropolitan equity, concentrated poverty, and related concerns.
• Work with communities of color to begin changing the way they define issues and consider regionalism in their analysis and solutions. This goal includes getting specific groups involved in identifying issues to be addressed and developing specific regional equity strategies that honor the concerns of communities of color and help them maintain control and cultural cohesion.
• Identify and connect groups that have already begun to address regional issues from a social justice perspective.