Equity, Opportunity, and the Regional Planning Process: Data and Mapping in Five U.S. Metropolitan Areas. (original) (raw)
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Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2020
Government agencies and nonprofit organizations have increasingly used spatial data to create equity and opportunity atlases or maps. This paper investigates how such maps have been integrated into planning processes, and if they have been useful in catalyzing engagement on equity issues. We employ a multiple case study approach to assess efforts in five U.S. regions: Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Portland, and Seattle. Our findings show that equity and opportunity mapping have stimulated new conversations, local actions, and regional plans, but many regions are still struggling to adopt policies that could meaningfully shift their landscapes of equity and opportunity.
Equity, Opportunity, and the Regional Planning Process
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Government agencies and nonprofit organizations have increasingly used spatial data to create equity and opportunity atlases or maps. This paper investigates how such maps have been integrated into planning processes, and if they have been useful in catalyzing engagement on equity issues. We employ a multiple case study approach to assess efforts in five U.S. regions: Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Portland, and Seattle. Our findings show that equity and opportunity mapping have stimulated new conversations, local actions, and regional plans, but many regions are still struggling to adopt policies that could meaningfully shift their landscapes of equity and opportunity.
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Exploring Regional Inequalities: Guide to Mapping the Sacramento Region
Inequality manifests spatially across the United States, resulting in wide disparities between cities and suburbs, new growth areas and established neighborhoods. In response to these trends of spatial inequality, regional equity organizations have sprung up around the country to address the results of inequality, and pose innovative and inclusive solutions. One such organization formed in Sacramento, California is the Coalition on Regional Equity (CORE). This project is the culmination of a regional mapping project for CORE. It includes a report on the project, including methodologies and challenges, guides to producing maps in support of regional equity organizing and conducting participatory community mapping workshops, and an annotated set of regional maps. Implications of power, dominant knowledge systems, and the usefulness of participatory geographic information systems are considered. Mapping in support of regional equity organizing is posed as a tool to support advocates in the struggle for equity in America's regions.
The Cartography of Opportunity: Spatial Data Science for Equitable Urban Policy
Housing Policy Debate, 2017
As evidence on the contextual effects of place upon individual outcomes has become increasingly solid over time, so too have urban policies and programs designed to connect under-served people with access to spatial opportunity. To this end, many attempts have been made to quantify the geography of opportunity and quite literally plot it on a map by combining evidence from studies on neighborhood effects with spatial data resources and GIS technology. Recently, these opportunity maps have not only become increasingly common but their preparation has been encouraged and facilitated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. A closer look at the foundations and methods that underlie these exercises offers important lessons I examine the practice of opportunity mapping from both theoretical and methodological perspectives , highlighting several weaknesses of the common methods. Following, I outline a theoretical framework based on Galster's categorization of the mechanisms of neighborhood effects. Using data from the Baltimore metropolitan region, I use confirmatory factor analysis to specify a measurement model that verifies the validity of the proposed theoretical framework. The model provides estimates of four latent variables conceived as the essential dimensions of spatial opportunity: Social-Interactive, Environmental, Geographic, and Institutional. Finally, I develop a neighborhood typology using unsupervised machine learning applied to the four dimensions of opportunity. Results suggest that opportunity mapping can be improved substantially through a better connection to the empirical literature on neighborhood effects, a multivariate statistical framework, and more direct relevance to public policy interventions.
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Community Development, 2011
Regional equity has taken off as a field of research and activism in recent years. Within the general field, three important variants have emerged: community development regionalism, in which the main interest is in using regional levers to promote a new form of community revitalization; policy change regionalism, in which the main emphasis is on shifting government rules to better distribute metropolitan resources; and social movement regionalism, in which the focus is on mobilizing communities for collective action at a regional level. Drawing on a series of case studies from across the country, we argue that all these variants have a role but that social movement regionalism may be particularly effective in productively addressing the inevitable tensions and conflicts that emerge in regional equity strategies, including the relationship to business-oriented regionalism, labor-community alliances, and the role of race. We conclude by speculating on the recent efforts of social movement regionalism to scale up, suggesting that this could present an important contribution to a broader and deeper movement for progressive social change in the United States.
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