Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas

by Chris Benner, Manuel Pastor

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the last several years, much has been written about growing economic challenges, increasing income inequality, and political polarization in the United States. This book argues that lessons for addressing these national challenges are emerging from a new set of realities in America’s metropolitan first, that inequity is, in fact, bad for economic growth; second, that bringing together the concerns of equity and growth requires concerted local action; and, third, that the fundamental building block for doing this is the creation of diverse and dynamic epistemic (or knowledge) communities, which help to overcome political polarization and help regions address the challenges of economic restructuring and social divides.

Genres: Nonfiction

466 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 14, 2015

Reviews

[matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read

This book makes a strong case that equity leads to stronger and longer economic expansion and it offers case studies on how to create more equitable cities. Some case studies were very good, but I work in economic development in Durham and the Raleigh-Durham case study was thin, very Raleigh-centric, and seemed to completely ignore where the current economic growth is in the region. The other case studies seemed much stronger and more nuanced.