What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• This report from Government Alliance on Race and Equity provides a roadmap for equitable development to advance racial equity.
• What role can you play in advancing equitable development?
• Read about supporting meaningful economic development in the South.
An Equitable Development Framework integrates people and place to create strong communities and people, as well as great places with equitable access. The Framework, with its equity drivers and outcomes, functions as an analytical tool to guide implementation to reduce disparities and achieve equitable outcomes for marginalized populations. The equity drivers build on the Puget Sound Regional Equity Network’s Principles of Equitable Development; local context may influence specific aspects of some of the elements as you work in your own community.
- Advance economic opportunity. Promote local economic development and entrepreneur opportunities, enhance community-serving establishments, and increase quality living wage jobs for people in all neighborhoods.
- Prevent displacement. Develop policies and programs that allow anyone who wants to live in the community to do so, especially current residents, and discourage displacement of viable small businesses that serve community needs.
- Preserve and expand affordable housing options. Create healthy, safe, and affordable housing for all family sizes and incomes in all neighborhoods.
- Understand and respond to local context. Respect local community character, cultural diversity, and values. Preserve and strengthen intact neighborhoods, building upon their local assets and resources.
- Promote broader mobility and connectivity. Prioritize an effective and affordable public transportation network that supports transit-dependent communities and provides equitable access to core services and amenities, including employment, education, and health and social services.
- Practice meaningful community engagement. Require local community participation and leadership in decision-making to reflect a diversity of voices, including targeted strategies to engage historically marginalized communities. Build cultural competence and responsiveness among all stakeholders, and structure planning processes to be clear, accessible and engaging.
- Develop healthy and safe communities. Create built environments that enhance community health through public amenities (schools, parks, open spaces, complete streets, health care, and other services), access to affordable healthy food, improved air quality, and safe and inviting environments.
- Promote environmental justice. Eliminate disproportionate environmental burdens and ensure an equitable share of environmental benefits for existing communities. Secure resources to mitigate and reverse the effects of environmental hazards past and present.
- Achieve full accessibility. Ensure any development that results from investments in the built environment is accessible and welcoming to people regardless of age, physical condition, or language.
These drivers are not designed to be deployed independently; their inter-relationship is fundamental to undoing the structural racism perpetuating current disparities. If implemented piecemeal or in isolation, they will result in transactional wins that do not produce lasting change. The Equitable Development Framework presents an integrated fabric of strategies to close racial disparities. Used together, these drivers have the potential to transform systems and shift from the current trajectory of growth that marginalizes many populations and compromises the diversity that makes communities strong.