Breakthrough Communities

The emerging metropolitan regional-equity movement promotes innovative policies to
ensure that all communities in a metropolitan region share resources and opportunities equally. Too
often, low-income communities and communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of pollution
and lack access to basic infrastructure and job opportunities. The metropolitan regional-equity
movement--sometimes referred to as a new civil rights movement--works for solutions to these
problems that take into account entire metropolitan regions: the inner-city core, the suburbs, and
exurban areas. This book describes current efforts to create sustainable communities with attention
to the "triple bottom line"--economy, environment, and equity--and argues that these three
interests are mutually reinforcing. After placing the movement in its historical, racial, and class
context, Breakthrough Communities offers case studies in which activists' accounts alternate with
policy analyses. These describe efforts in Detroit, New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta, Camden,
Chicago, Los Angeles, and other metropolitan areas to address such problems as vacant property,
brownfields, affordable housing, accessible transportation, community food security, and the
aftermath of Katrina and September 11. The volume concludes by considering future directions for the
movement, including global linkages devoted to such issues as climate change. ContributorsCarl
Anthony, Angela Glover Blackwell, Robert D. Bullard, Sheryll Cashin, Kizzy Charles-Guzmán, Don Chen,
Celine d'Cruz, Amy B, Dean, Hattie Dorsey, Cynthia M. Duncan, Juliet Ellis, Danny Feingold, Deeohn
Ferris, Kenneth Galdston, Greg Galluzzo, Howard Gillette Jr., David Goldberg, Robert Gottlieb, Bart
Harvey, William A. Johnson Jr., Chris Jones, Van Jones, Anupama Joshi, Bruce Katz, Victoria Kovari,
Mike Kruglik, Steve Lerner, Greg Leroy, Amy Liu, Stephen McCullough, Mary Nelson, Jeremy Nowak,
Myron Orfield, Manuel Pastor, M. Paloma Pavel, john a. powell, Cheryl Rivera, Faith R. Rivers,
Nicolas Ronderos, Rachel Rosner, David Rusk, Priscilla Salant, David Satterthwaite, Ellen Schneider,
Peggy M. Shepard, L. Benjamin Starrett, Jennie Stephens, Elizabeth Tan, Petra Todorovich, Andrea
Torrice, Mark Vallianatos, Robert Yaro