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Regional Equity as a Civil Rights Issue

By Ronald Hayduk

The color line in the U.S. is nowhere more visible than between its cities and its suburbs. Urban America, comprised largely of people of color mired in poverty, is the flip side of White suburban prosperity. Gentrified urban neighborhoods and declining inner-ring suburbs are also two sides of that same coin. These patterns of racial and regional disparity define the landscape of metropolitan areas. They also reflect the maldistribution of power and opportunity. Indeed, White suburban privilege is made possible precisely because of urban distress and racial oppression. In short, it matters where one lives.1

Despite these seemingly intractable conditions, progressives are increasingly challenging this social order. One strategy community organizers are pursuing is to inject themselves into current regional planning debates. Urban activists have turned towards regional level organizing because community-building efforts are being undermined by larger regional-and global-forces. Community builders are witnessing the undoing of hard-fought gains on a daily basis. Powerful actors and developments in other parts of metropolitan areas are severely altering the shape of urban neighborhoods-from the availability of jobs, housing, health care, education, and public space, to crime and punishment-no matter what activists and residents do. These conditions demand a new approach to community organizing: one that not only takes regional developments into account, but can also affect them.

Thankfully, the past decade has seen a spate of scholarship, policy analysis, foundation-sponsored funding initiatives, and, most importantly, social change efforts-all focused upon understanding and affecting regional area dynamics. "Regionalism"-a buzzword that sees the fate of cities and suburbs as intertwined-has become a new cottage industry (Swanstrom, 2001).

While there are different approaches to regionalism, some community-based urban organizers are making concerted efforts to reframe this policy discussion as a civil rights issue. Because regional dynamics affect people's opportunities and shape lives, a regional strategy has become, for a variety of activists, the key to achieving racial equity and economic justice. Along these lines, community-based organizations, radical labor unions, environmental justice groups, innovative policy institutes, and progressive law-makers are promoting a regional agenda that stresses equal outcomes as opposed to "equal opportunity." They view the latter concept-a mantra for opponents of affirmative action-as essentially spurious.

This essay analyzes the movement for regional equity and examines its potential for radical social transformation. We begin with a review of different approaches to regionalism.

Component parts of regions affect each other. The problems and solutions of cities and suburbs are thereby connected. They have common interests and a shared destiny. These arguments are used in a growing number of regional public policy initiatives such as "anti-sprawl" and "smart growth" projects as well as in "anti-gentri- fication" campaigns.

Yet, suburbanites apparently are prepared to pay the costs of what they now have and to forego the benefits of more integrated regional planning arrangements, especially if racial concerns and equity outcomes are prominently promoted. Many suburbanites believe that their gated communities are worth it.

Nevertheless, their isolation may be an illusion. The economic fortunes of suburban dwellers are in large part dependent upon the health of the region they live within, whether they know it or not. It may not be obvious to residents of either community, but central city disadvantage imposes costs that go beyond municipal boundaries, such as problems associated with suburban sprawl. Such costs affect the viability-and sustainability-of whole regions. Metropolitan regions have always been the economic engines of nations. In an increasingly global world, the conditions of cities and suburbs are increasingly linked. Ultimately, they rise and fall together.

Along with the decentralization of urban growth, these realities have led many community-based social change agents to increasingly think and act regionally. Most social, economic, and political problems cannot be solved by independent actors and fragmented governmental jurisdictions acting alone. Cross-jurisdictional problems demand cross-jurisdictional solutions at the metropolitan or regional level. However, there is significant disagreement about the nature of regional dynamics. Analysts differ both in the problems they focus on and in the explanations they propose. Moreover, they promote different strategies and policies to remedy them.

There are two broad approaches to regional problems: market- driven regionalism and democratic regionalism. The first sees materially self-interested individuals acting to advance personal benefits and minimize their costs. This approach, which draws heavily on neoliberal economic theory and public choice models, favors market-oriented solutions to regional problems. When government intervention is invoked, it is in the role of exploiting "natural" comparative advantages to promote economic growth.

The second general approach, democratic regionalism, sees regional problems as the outcome of long historical processes and favors radical intervention aimed at structural change. It also sees racial dynamics as intimately bound up with regional disparities, and thus posits the goal of regional and racial equity as necessary to solve problems and lay the foundation for sustainable development. Regional planning that makes equity central is a useful means for communities of color to attain redress.

Interestingly, both approaches see central city disinvestment as problematic-for inner cities as well as for inner and outer-ring suburbs. Both regional approaches accurately view the federal government's funding of state priorities (e.g., transportation) as reflecting pragmatic and bureaucratic concerns, along with pork-barreling, leading to dominant groups coming out on top. But important differences in their diagnoses of regional and community-level problems lead them to draw very different strategies for reform and remedy.

Market regionalists argue that a minimal amount of regional planning can promote greater efficiency and better services. Although some regional advocates and policy-makers see fragmented metropolitan area governance as not all bad-fostering competition among governments- others argue that cooperation among different jurisdictions can better meet the needs of governments with few resources, such as for fire, sewers, police, utilities, etc. (Dodge, 1996).

Market regionalists focus primarily on the problems in the suburbs-such as "sprawl" and how to limit it-and only secondarily, if at all, on the revival of inner cities. Suburban sprawl, defined as the spreading out of housing, strip malls and businesses to more distant and once rural areas, produces loss of green space, increased traffic congestion, and environmental degradation. Sprawl wastes land, water and energy (Benfield et al., 1999).

Yet many market regionalists do not connect sprawl-and the accompanying social segregation and racial polarization-with the centrifugal forces that propel people and resources outward from central cities. Like an earthquake that devastates its epicenter and sends shock waves outward, economic and social forces push growth toward the suburbs and produce geographic polarization. As private investment and jobs leave cities, people follow. Moreover, resources and people are simultaneously pushed outward by the concentration of urban problems-unemployment, poverty, crime, poor schools, poor services, and decaying infrastructure-all in part due to a dwindling tax base and comparatively low per-capita government spending. The effects of concentrated poverty in cities can be amply seen in education, jobs, housing, health, neighborhood safety, crime, incarceration rates, and environmental conditions. Conversely, suburban jurisdictions disproportionately reap huge benefits from racial polarization, even as they exacerbate the problems of sprawl (depleting green space and endangering fragile environmental resources).

At the same time, inner-ring and older suburbs are experiencing problems similar to declining inner cities, including increased poverty, declining infrastructure, decaying housing, unemployment and crime. Unlike their wealthier suburban counterparts, however, inner-ring suburbs find themselves ill equipped to handle such problems, because their smaller tax-bases provide them with insufficient revenue for economic development and public services. Consequently, problems once thought to be confined to central cities have become more widespread, further propelling people into the exurbs and thus creating ever more sprawl. Importantly, as cities and inner-ring suburbs decline, so too does the whole metropolitan region. Thus, problems affecting suburban communities are directly related to the devaluation of central cities.

In response to these developments (albeit not always from the above analysis), suburban-based "anti-sprawl" and "smart growth" initiatives have sprung up over the past decade. The thrust of these campaigns is to try to control development so that sprawl does not ruin the quality of life for suburbanites. This may entail some form of cooperative governance-coordinated action by separate political jurisdictions-in which regulatory power steers the market toward efficient ends (Downs, 1996). Under its best form, regional governments promote fiscal cooperation-e.g., through revenue sharing-that can improve services in cities and suburbs alike. This requires political alliances. A relatively progressive and successful example is the Twin Cities Metro Council, one of the few regional governments in the U.S. today.3 Other jurisdictions use planning methods to achieve "smart growth" (i.e. limit sprawl while promoting economic development) by establishing boundaries, and using zoning and land use policy for resource conservation and environmental protection (Rusk, 1993). Essentially, such efforts attempt to manage mutual economic self-interest across the distinct political units that make up a region.

Increasingly, these kinds of suburban-based initiatives are gaining traction. In 1998, for example, there were 240 ballot measures across the country proposed to limit sprawl. Soon after, Congress formed bipartisan task forces to investigate sprawl; the GAO produced reports examining its causes; and the Clinton White House introduced a new "Livability Agenda." In the 2000 elections there were more than 550 growth-related measures on the ballot in 38 states (primarily anti-growth ballot proposals), 72 percent of which passed (Myers and Puentes, 2001). These ballot measures-launched by various citizen groups and state representatives-included issues covering open space, transportation and infrastructure, economic development, growth management, and regional governance arrangements. Vice President Al Gore also put sprawl squarely on his presidential campaign agenda, attempting to appeal to suburban voters. More recently, New Jersey Governor McGreevey made anti-sprawl policy the centerpiece in his state of the state address: "There is no single greater threat to our way of life in New Jersey than the unrestrained, uncontrolled development that has jeopardized our water supplies, made our schools more crowded, our roads more congested and our open space disappear" (New York Times, January 15, 2003). In typical fashion, McGreevey called for "smart growth" measures that would protect farmland, parks, and drinking water by empowering localities to rewrite land-use laws (now tilted toward developers) to limit construction and impose fees to spurn new malls and housing.

While these measures aimed at limiting sprawl might better manage economic development in the burbs and save rural green space-certainly positive steps for regional systems-they remain, however, sharply biased. When McGreevey calls for preserving "our way of life," who and what are clear: White suburban interests. A role for urban community-based organizations is almost always absent in such initiatives; nor is racial equity or the plight of distressed urban and working-class communities anywhere to be found on these agendas. In fact, this type of regionalism is typically "race-neutral" and deceptively couched in universalistic language. For all the touting of mutual interests and impacts, market-driven regional approaches essentially maintain and reproduce gross inequalities.

Democratic regionalism, by contrast, makes race and class central. Explicitly highlighting minority and working-class concerns, it calls for greater cooperation among competing jurisdictions, with a particular focus on reviving urban centers to assure that they have affordable housing, quality education, and jobs with livable wages. Moreover, giving the race-factor its due, democratic regionalists squarely frame efforts to forge greater regional equity within the rubric of the civil rights movement (powell, 2000).

This approach to regional problems tries to bend government-the federal government (which can be more re-distributive) and state and local governments (which can be made more responsive)-toward making cities more livable through: preserving and improving existing infrastructure, including public housing; using transportation funds to connect communities to jobs; increasing citizen participation in civic institutions and political action (which can make politicians more accountable); and promoting programs aimed at improving racial equity, and community and regional ties.

Thus, community-building efforts must include some regional-level organizing-or at the very least aim to affect regional area dynamics-because the health of a neighborhood is linked to the health of the region to which it belongs. Community organizers will only be effective if they work from a regional perspective that presses for equity in decision-making. Improving the well-being of people of color and working-class residents-particularly in cities and inner-ring suburbs- requires taking action beyond the neighborhood level. Applying a regional lens to community problems highlights particular institutions and actors that community organizers can then target, and helps forge effective strategies for social change. In short, democratic regionalism is a critical missing link for effective community-building.

Democratic regionalism addresses the legacy of the past. The current pattern of segregation (of people and opportunity) is the result of a host of public policies and private practices enacted over time, reflecting powerful economic and political interests. Democratic regionalists know that racial considerations have been central to these developments. Compared to market regionalists, they hold a broader conception of community, and place greater value on equity and democracy. Ultimately, they favor explicitly confronting dominant interests, and they aim to transform racialized institutions and policies.4

One strategy is to expose how race and class inequities across space reflect accumulated White ruling-class power. This approach exposes the historical processes and institutions that produce and reproduce disparate outcomes. Part of the reason communities of color and working-class residents in metropolitan areas face such enormous problems-from inadequate housing, jobs, schools, transportation and public services to higher crime and concentrated poverty-is that suburbanization siphoned off needed resources from cities. The well known story of how post-World War II deindustrialization and suburban growth hollowed out urban centers and created harsh and desperate conditions for millions is perhaps a bit clichéd, but it is nevertheless integral to reframing contemporary regional discussion and organizing. For example, it is critical to show how suburban prosperity is not coincidental: that it has been subsidized by the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars funneled through a host of public programs, from the GI bill and FHA mortgages to tax and transportation policies. It is equally crucial to note that people of color were precluded from access to such resources and opportunities by discriminatory public policies and private practices-enacted and carried out through racialized institutions-that lock them into declining urban areas and pockets of poverty.5

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