NFG 1999 Conference Highlights
Strong Families
Strong Neighborhoods

Race & Sprawl
By Roland Anglin

At NFG’s Miami conference, funders packed panels on Race & Sprawl, ready to examine the linkages between race, the concentration of poverty in inner cities, and unplanned growth. Three panelists – Myron Orfield, a state legislator from Minneapolis, Minnesota; Carl Anthony, a community planner from Oakland, California; and Mary Gonzalez, a community organizer from Chicago – presented arguments and data to shed light on this complicated and frequently ignored dynamic.

Orfield summarized the findings from his research on public investment trends in many larger and mid-sized metropolitan areas across the country. He examined state expenditures for sewer, transportation, and other infrastructure placement. In almost every metropolitan area he has studied, he has found a clear pattern of inner cities and older inner-ring suburbs subsidizing infrastructure in outlying areas.

By subsidizing the development of undeveloped places in outlying areas, policy makers are exacerbating middle-class flight from cities and first ring suburbs. Orfield maintains that this is not economically efficient. Most of these new places might not have developed at all absent government subsidies favoring new highway and new home construction. On the other side of the equation, many urban areas and inner-ring suburbs are struggling with declining population and decaying infrastructure. Increasingly, those who reside in cities are people of color with a heightened need for affordable housing and other social services. This creates a paradox: the demand for public services increases while the tax base shrinks.

Race is a clear issue because of residential segregation in inner cities and many inner-ring older suburbs. A political vacuum has allowed outward development to go unchecked. Orfield sees a need and opportunity for political coalition between central cities and their inner-ring suburbs to counterbalance the unequal subsidizing of sprawling development patterns.

Carl Anthony, in principle and argument, agrees with Orfield, though his vantage point is a bit different. It’s much more focused on the growing isolation and despairing quality of the environment in which many people of color must live. In many cases, the environment is despoiled by years of industry sited next to communities of color. Anthony argues that people of color need to organize and plan around environmental conditions in their communities to improve health and other indicators of community livability. Anthony acknowledges the difficulty in getting communities of color to organize around environmental issues, but he points to environmental equity as a logical extension of the Civil Rights movement.

Mary Gonzalez argues that Orfield’s work is crucial to the organizing she’s involved in as part of Chicago’s Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations. From her perspective, this inequity in how banking and other services are provided in inner city communities is not the clear-cut organizing device it once was. Sprawl development has made community organizing much more complicated. Coalition building across diverse communities is a necessity, building political alliances between near-in suburban and inner-city constituencies, many of whom have never worked together before. Gonzalez points to churches and faith-based alliances as key to organizing across these disparate communities.

The panelists illustrated just how much is involved in a discussion of race and space. Audience participation was spirited. Funders and other participants asked tough questions about the originality of sprawl as a significant policy agenda item. Essentially, many asked, “Didn’t this issue come up 30 years ago?” “What is so important about sprawl that it should be linked with race and equity issues?” Many questions centered on what can and should be funded where race and sprawl are connected. A rough consensus formed that, in this case, funding broad-based grassroots movements to document regional inequities and form coalitions to address them would be an excellent use of philanthropic resources. The audience agreed that this is a complicated topic and argued that funders need to support knowledge building and documentation before supporting actual “smart growth” programs.
 

Roland Anglin is Senior Vice President at Seedco and serves on the NFG Board of Directors, where he is Treasurer and chair of the Administrative & Finance committee.

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