Race and Regional Equity Program

Project Overview

This project targets African American leaders and institutions to support research, policy, and advocacy on equitable development, smart growth, transportation, and regional equity. the EJRC supervise the editing and production of select conference papers and proceedings from roundtables with participants from nationally recognized authors who come from a range of disciplines. The center provides leadership on a range of regional equity issues, including smart growth, equitable development, regional transportation and the built environment, emergency response to man-made and natural disasters, and community restoration. The project collects, assembles, catalogs, and archives resource material on race and regionalism, livable communities, transportation and the built environment, smart growth, and equitable development. The EJRC prepares public testimony and written policy briefs to assist congressional leaders and other elected officials shape policies and legislation to address regional disparities. Research and output from this project will be used to inform, educate, and train a new generation of leaders, experts, technicians, and practitioners around regional equity.

African American Forum on Race and Regionalism Collaboration
The EJRC is working with numerous national organizations around regional equity issues. As part of this national effort, the EJRC joined in with PolicyLink and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity to form the African American Forum on Race and Regionalism (AAFRR), a collaborative that works to strengthen the conversation among communities of color about metropolitan regional sustainability, transportation equity and mobility, environmental justice, economic investments, and strategic community development. The African American Forum on Race and Regionalism was founded to provide interdisciplinary research and an African American perspective to the regionalism discussion. The forum’s co-chairs include: Carl Anthony, Angela Glover Blackwell, Robert D. Bullard, and john a. powell.

Cleveland African American Regionalism Project: Regionalism in Cleveland, OH
Together with other members of the African American Forum on Race and Regionalism, the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University recently completed an investigation to explore how regional equity policies could strengthen the African American community as well as the health of the entire region. The report was commissioned by the Presidents’ Council of Cleveland, a collaboration comprised of chief executive officers from some of the largest African American owned-and-operated businesses in the Greater Cleveland area. The study analyzed the Cleveland metropolitan region as well as articulated regional policy approaches on how to reinvigorate Cleveland and its suburbs.

Two years in the making, the report, Regionalism: Growing Together to Expand Opportunity to All, helps show how equity must be seen as a corner stone in regional planning, not a stumbling block. By uniting communities with opportunity—through better education, transportation, housing and economic investment—the entire Cleveland region will be more prosperous, healthy and just. To download the executive summary, click HERE.

Race and Regional Equity

Two major book projects were developed out of the project roundtables, commissioned papers, and forums in 2007. They include:

Bullard, Robert D. The Black Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century: Race, Power, and the Politics of Place. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, May 2007.

Robert D. Bullard, Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice and Regional Equity. Cambridge: The MIT Press, February 2007.

Robert D. Bullard, “Left Behind by Transportation Apartheid Before and After Disasters Strike,” Focus Magazine Vol. 35, No. 2 (March/April, 2007). Transportation serves as a key component in addressing poverty, unemployment, and equal opportunity goals by ensuring access to education, health care, and other public services. Transportation equity is consistent with the goals of the larger civil rights movement and the emerging regional equity movement. American society is largely divided between individuals with cars and those without cars. The private automobile is still the most dominant travel mode of every segment of the American population, including the poor and people of color. Clearly, private automobiles provide enormous employment access advantages to their owners. Having a car can also mean the difference between being trapped and escaping natural and man-made disasters.

Robert D. Bullard gave a keynote address at the “Race and Regionalism Conference” sponsored by the Institute on Race & Poverty, Minneapolis, MN (May 5-7, 2005). The PowerPoint presentation is found at http://www.kirwaninstitute.org/news/RnR2005/index.php2.htm

Robert D. Bullard gave a presentation and participated in a book signing event at the The Advancing Regional Equity Summit sponsored by PolicyLink, Inc. and Smart Growth Network, Philadelphia, PA (May 23-25, 2005).