State of the Region December 2008

State of the Region: Growth, Equity, and Inclusion in the Bay Area
By Manuel Pastor, Rhonda Ortiz, Jennifer Tran, Justin Scoggins, Vanessa Carter
The Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE), University of Southern California

Introduction

For the last decade, regional business and civic groups have been crafting indices to get a handle on the progress of their metropolitan areas.  The metrics have tracked things like the state of higher education, the quality of life, and the rate of business innovation – all aimed at determining whether the region can create new products, attract “knowledge workers,” and remain competitive in a globalizing economy.

But what about inclusion and equity in the regional economy?  While some indices have taken a stab at this – Ohio’s Fund for Our Economic Future in their Dashboard Indicators project considers minority business creation, Joint Venture’s Silicon Valley Index includes racial differences in dropout rates, and San Jose’s Working Partnerships includes indicators of income inequality in their labor-oriented reports for Santa Clara County–we have yet to see a template for what might be termed a metro-wide regional equity audit.

Part of the reason for the gap is that traditional economics and popular discourse has generally viewed social equity as an afterthought, a luxury to consider if basic economic growth is healthy.  This is, we would suggest, exactly wrong: research has shown that those metros that make more progress on reducing poverty, segregation, and inequality actually grow faster and stronger.  Partly because of this, we need to include equity even in the midst of the deep economic downturn likely to face California and the Bay.  

How can we aim higher to build a region that taps into all our resident’s talents? The Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at USC has been collaborating with Urban Habitat, convener of the Social Equity Caucus, to craft an equity-oriented “State of the Region” index.  We have sought to utilize a variety of different data sources and build on some stellar existing efforts at measuring equity, weaving them together in a fuller profile of social equity in the Bay.

The resulting picture is a little unsettling.  The Bay Area has long prided itself on its strong economy, diverse population, and progressive instincts – but our diversity is threatened by gentrification and displacement, our seemingly unstoppable economy may race past undereducated residents for whom new jobs are out of reach, and our strong commitment to the environment needs to be infused with practical steps to curb patterns of environmental injustice and climate change while providing new opportunities for less advantaged communities.

But the opportunity is great, as well: our new demographic can and should be trained for leadership.  That leadership can help us focus on improving our economy by wrenching-up job quality, creation, and readiness.  And those communities will be the new stewards of the environment, with great potential for new employment, healthier neighborhoods, and green business – especially given the number of green investors in the region.  

We won’t be able to do it alone.  There are many regional groupings sympathetic to the equity agenda – the Greenbelt Alliance and the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities with their emphasis on Smart Growth and sustainability, Working Partnerships and EBASE with their focus on equitable development, and Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute with their stress on human capital and job creation. If we can include all of us, we can meet our challenges; if we can bridge the Bay, we can build the Bay together.