According to Green Cities, a report by Living Cities, a collaborative of large foundations and financial institutions, cities are trying hard to go green.
four out of five cities report that sustainability is among their top five priorities as articulated by the mayor. Over 75 percent of cities have, or will soon have, detailed plans on how they will reduce greenhouse gasses; nearly all are calling for an emissions cut of between 10 and 20 percent in the next five to 10 years
But there’s a big gap in most plans: the needs of low income communities of color.
relatively few cities’ programs are incorporating working families and poor people into their sustainability plans. For example, new transit programs like new rail lines or bike paths tend to move residents of higher-income neighborhoods to the urban core, rather than offering service to neglected neighborhoods. And few city officials we surveyed on green jobs talked about ensuring that links are made between new green-collar job opportunities and the under- and unemployed.
As a result, cities are going to miss a once in a generation opportunity to actually do something about inner-city poverty — and to do it in a way that helps save the planet.
it is precisely in low-income areas that sustainability plans can have the most dramatic impacts: The housing stock is the least energy efficient, and the job seekers have the skills and motivation to plug into the expected growth in construction and retrofit jobs.
What’s particularly galling about the redlining by most city green plans is that, as the report points out, there are lots of ways cities can go green that help everybody. If you build better mass transit, middle-class folk can drive less and inner-city poor folk who don’t have cars now have a shot at jobs that they otherwise couldn’t take.
It would be a particularly awful irony if America threw away its best chance chance to rebuild low-income communities of color right after it elected its first black president.
