Our cities and metropolitan areas represent the best and worse of who we are in this moment. We see with our own eyes the outcome of multiple and interwoven social divisions. We notice the fact that many of our community members are without a home and forced to grapple with nature. We’re aware that many people are technically housed, but are still forced to grapple with nature due to the inability to afford utility payments or due to shady landlord practices—sometimes both.
In addition to the question of how we got to this state in our urban social conditions, is the question of how we make sense of what we’re seeing in our cities. For some, it is as simple as personal failures. In the struggle for existence that has been enshrined in the law, championed in social discourse, and perpetuated through social practices—there are bound to be winners and losers. For others, visible inequalities are a product of social boundary-based divisiveness and the force of profit-maximization.
Social boundary-based divisiveness is what greeted the north-bound individuals and families fleeing the violence of the Jim Crow South. It is what animated the institutionalization of redlining neighborhoods with a Black American presence and stirred the emotions of people vigorously protesting the bussing of Black students to schools offering better opportunities. To this day, it is clear that social boundary-based divisiveness lives on in the ability of White Americans to drive neighborhood decline through their departure from neighborhoods and to spur neighborhood growth and investment through their arrival. Clearly, no other ethnoracial group can leverage this level of power and privilege.
The leveraging of race-based power and privilege interweaves with profit-maximization to shape our cities and metro areas. Essentially, profit-maximization is the drive to maximize the exchange value of owned properties. Profit-maximization rides the wave of urban growth and aligns with the aspirations of civic and business leadership. On the ground, profit maximization is reflected in landlords deciding to reinvest in properties where the surrounding area is showing signs of economic growth and disinvesting in areas where there are signs of decline. In the same context where individuals and families are seeking affordable places in which they can live and feel good about, many property owners make calculated decisions about how much rent they can charge against the risk of vacancies, and how much information they can—and should—collect on potential tenants before agreeing to lease terms.
Those of us who are invested in advancing structures of community care face an uphill climb. In the face of social divisions, we feel called upon to firmly assert that each human being has intrinsic worth and deserves to be granted a wide breadth of opportunity to be the best they can be. Caught in the web of profit-maximization, we fight to free ourselves and our communities, steeled by the sense that we will accrue social benefits by providing large majorities of the population with reasonable opportunities to secure safe, decent, and affordable housing. Our natural inclination to repair what is broken and to fix what is not working is valid and worthy of pursuit. What has already been achieved with limited resources is applaudable. The work that is necessary to marshal the relational resources needed to overcome the challenges—is mighty.
The assets we bring to the task begin with being able to have initial conversations from an informed perspective. We understand what it takes to build powerful inquiries and the impact it makes to deliver insights that are sound, clear, and constructive for future strategy. We walk with you to properly integrate your matter of concern with the rich complexities of urban inequalities. We build alongside you research designs that are mindful of budget, resource allocations, and the need to deliver compelling insights. And we share the determination to move policy forward without trying to solve the world in a day. Let’s connect and build.