4. Inequality, racism and povertyThe sustainability dialogue has been mostly a white, upper middle class dialogue, with few connections to urban, non-white and low-income populations. Looking at sustainability in urban centers forces us to deal directly with the tensions between the capacity to plan for the long-term future and the need to deal equitably with the survival needs of today. America is becoming older overall, with more kids in school, and considerably more culturally and racially diverse. In the 1990's, immigration has contributed almost one-third of total population gains. Of the nearly one million immigrants entering each year this past decade, half are from Latin America and one quarter is from Asia. Almost three-quarters settle in just six states: California, New York, New Jersey, Florida and Illinois. As of 1990, 93% of the foreign born population lived in metropolitan areas. Just eight metropolitan areas received the lion's share: Los Angeles-Southern California, New York-New Jersey, Miami-South Florida, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco-Bay Area These "gateway" cities, each of which received over 100,000 immigrants during the 1980's, are home to 71% of the foreign born who arrived during the 1980's.73 A recent National Academy of Sciences panel found that on net, the overall benefits of this level of immigration are positive, including long-term workforce development, while the short term costs of rapid influx pose fiscal challenges on these gateway cities and states. 74. Fueled in part by this influx, the minority population is projected to increase by 16.5 million during the 1990's, and is expected to account for more than three-quarters of the population growth between 2000 and 2010. Combined with slower growth of the white population, these trends will boost the minority share of the US population from 24% in 1990 to 32 % in 2010 and almost 50% by 2050. In Chicago, of the projected 1990-2010 population growth of 1.8 million persons, one million will be Hispanic, who will most likely settle in the suburbs. 75 We are now approaching the two decade mark in the history of documentation of the disproportionate burden of environmental health risk borne by the poor and particularly by people of color.76 These same populations have borne the effects of displacement due to siting of expressways, major sports arenas and specialized facilities built for Olympics, conventions and World's Fairs. Central city minority householders in many regions earn only one-half to two-thirds the amounts their suburban cohorts are earning.77 The ability to directly address these inequities is confounded by the limits of political systems. Much the way that sprawl has resulted in disinvestment from older areas in favor of investment in new ones, so has the political result-as reapportionment occurs, newer districts tend to cover areas with growth oriented interests at the expense of the interests of older, smaller and more land-locked areas. The strong concern expressed by advocates of metropolitan governance regarding the fragmentation of local government masks an even stronger concern of central city residents of under-representation. For example, the city council in Chicago has one elected representative, a ward alderman for every 50,000 residents, while the city councils of suburbs just over the border such as Evanston and Oak Park, with approximately the same populations each as a Chicago ward have one elected representative for every 5,000 residents-and their own "community" (albeit municipal) budgets. 78The high degree of centralization of central city services which results from this kind of situation can leave residents and businesses feeling powerless to deal with their everyday concerns about crime and school quality, often described collectively as "push factors" leading to outmigration. Another inequity apparently results from the way in which reapportionment in the House of Representatives occurs. While as a nation we are both spreading out and growing in population, the number of congressional representatives is fixed. As one recent impassioned organization to the President's Council on Sustainable Development testified, "do the math!"79 A recent study by Hal Wolman and Lisa Marckini of central city representation in Congress finds that over the past forty years, not only has central city effective representation declined, but that "suburban representatives are now firmly in control of the House."80 A study of central city representation on the governing boards of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, which control significant resources for transportation planning and investment, found that while central city residents comprise 34% of the population, they are represented by just 5% of the votes.81 Myron Orfield has studied tax policies in twenty-two major metropolitan areas. The studies show that as a result of these demographic patterns, the tax bases generating resources for schools and for infrastructure are being siphoned off from older and more central areas, where most people of color reside, to the benefit of newer and more distant communities.82 A forthcoming study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project and others documents both the place-based and the civil rights effects of forty years of transportation decentralization in the Cleveland and Chicago regions. 83
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