Interview: Race, Class & Sprawl

Carl Anthony, Urban Habitat Program (UHP) Director, talked with UHP’s Julie Quiroz in the Western States Center News Magazine (Spring/Summer 1999). UHP is dedicated to building a multicultural majority for urban environmental leadership in the San Francisco Bay Area. Excerpted and reprinted with permission from the Western States Center.

Q: Does urban sprawl threaten people of color?

A: It’s both a threat and an opportunity. A threat in part because those framing the issues are not focused on social justice. Economically, it’s negative when developers… gentrify, raise rents and displace low-income people. Culturally, it’s negative when communities are redesigned… in ways that destroy their vibrancy and history. It’s negative to have people of color and environmentalists lining up against each other. But the fight against sprawl also presents real opportunities. Working to create urban growth boundaries gives us a chance to reframe the relationship between the inner city and the suburbs. Low income communities and people of color can use the decision process in powerful ways.

Q: What is smart growth?

A: "Smart growth" acknowledges that unmanaged growth is a disaster. The problem is, "smart growth" hasn’t been framed to involve the constituencies most negatively affected by current patterns of development and sprawl. This is an opportunity for people of color to… decide what we want our communities to be like, and how they should relate to other communities. For the first time in decades, we have a chance to do something about the urban/suburban disparity.

Q: What are the possibilities?

A: Last year we collaborated with Minnesota state Representative Myron Orfield on a study of the Bay Area. We came up with three basic findings: 1) poverty is deepening in the inner cities; 2) poverty is deepening in many suburbs that lack the tax base needed to meet their growing needs; and, 3) a "privileged quarter" receives the lion’s share of public and private investment without giving anything in return. Looking at all this, we’re starting to believe that an inner city/suburban alliance is possible, with tax equity as the cornerstone.

Q: What might tax equity look like?

A: Right now, taxes are used in very regressive ways. We give tax breaks to corporations and pass on the costs to poor people. What we need is a way to take the tax issue away from the Right. We should look at Minnesota’s tax sharing model and how it could be used as a strategy against sprawl. In Minnesota, each city contributes a percentage of its commercial property tax base growth into a resource pool. Then they divide it up among the cities, based on need. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s definitely making a difference.

For more information about race and urban sprawl, contact UHP at 415-561-3333 or visit their website at www.igc.apc.org/uhp. Be sure to visit CPA’s sprawl information online.