Day 1: Regional & megaregional equity
Dwayne Marsh, Stephen Klineberg, and Amanda Timm discussed disparities in affordable housing, transportation investments, and environmental justice, as well as how equity will be impacted by future development, particularly with the demographic changes underway in the Texas Triangle.
Video will be posted soon.
Dwayne Marsh, Senior Director for Policy Engagement at PolicyLink, said that low-income, minority groups often bear the brunt of development. To some, he said, the Interstate Highway System was a huge success, but it destroyed low-income communities and led to sprawl. Some have promoted transit-oriented development (TOD) as a way to serve the housing and transportation needs of low-income communities, but he said that TODs rarely achieve equity. Instead, high demand and low supply leads to unaffordable prices. Low-income communities also lack access to good food as a result of limited transportation options.
Marsh said that federal transportation policies – particularly the upcoming transportation reauthorization bill – are vital to addressing these inequalities. “There can be no megaregional equity without regional equity,” he said.
There are three ways to ensure that megaregional planning does not hurt equity, he added. First, local officials and advocates must remain involved in federal policy-making. Second, they must secure regional coordination among progressive groups. Third, he said that the region must embrace multiculturalism.
Stephen Klineberg on the Changing Demographics of Houston (.ppt, 1 MB):
Stephen Klinberg, a Rice University sociology professor who conducts the annual Houston Area Survey, said that the resource economy is being replaced by a human resource economy. “The source of wealth now is knowledge,” he said. But the gap between rich and poor has become very deep, and he said that no country in the absence of military conquest has ever undergone such a vast redistribution of wealth as quickly as the US has in the last generation.
he added, and education is critical to reducing it. However, Texas ranks 50th in terms of high school graduates and 35th for college graduates. “I tell people the most important institution of higher learning in this city is not Rice University, wonderful as Rice is,” he said. “It’s the Houston Community College System. That is where we take children coming out of high school with no skills and connect them to the technical jobs of the 21st century.”
Texas is also at the front of demographic changes, noting that the state became a majority-minority state around 2004. With the 2010 Census, he said that there may be as many as 10 or 12 majority-minority states, and every state is expected to fall into that category by 2040. “The American future is here in Houston and Texas,” he said. “How we navigate that transition will have enormous significance for the kind of future that America builds in the 21st century.”
Amanda Timm, executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation-Houston (LISC), said that there are two keys to increasing equity in the 21st century, which will allow everyone to prosper more. First, she said, cities and employers must provide affordable, transit-accessible housing. These must be located close to employment centers, which is a challenge as urban land values rise.
Second, she said that cities must engage low-income and working-class communities to see what their priorities are. She cited an example in Oakland, where the city wanted to turn part of a low-income neighborhood into a parking garage for a park and ride. Instead, the community promoted its own vision, and the two sides came to an agreement that created a parking garage, affordable housing, and retail stores. “I think it’s important to realize that all the different voices must be heard,” she said. “That will be critical to regional equity, because without that, we won’t know what equity means. This will help us define it.” She said that incentives work better than regulations in Texas, and that advocates should prove how these projects are economically beneficial to everyone involved.