"Regional Equity as a Civil Rights Issue" in Socialism and Democracy, Radical Perspectives on Race and Racism, Special Issue # 33. Winter/Spring, 2003. Edited by Ronald Hayduk, Yusuf Nuruddin & Victor Wallis.

The color line in the U.S. is nowhere more visible than between its cities and its suburbs. Urban America, comprised largely of people of color mired in poverty, is the flip side of White suburban prosperity. Gentrified urban neighborhoods and declining inner-ring suburbs are also two sides of that same coin. These patterns of racial and regional disparity define the landscape of metropolitan areas. They also reflect the maldistribution of power and opportunity. Indeed, White suburban privilege is made possible precisely because of urban distress and racial oppression. In short, it matters where one lives.

Despite these seemingly intractable conditions, progressives are increasingly challenging this social order. One strategy community organizers are pursuing is to inject themselves into current regional planning debates. Urban activists have turned towards regional level organizing because community-building efforts are being undermined by larger regional-and global-forces. Community builders are witnessing the undoing of hard-fought gains on a daily basis. Powerful actors and developments in other parts of metropolitan areas are severely altering the shape of urban neighborhoods-from the availability of jobs, housing, health care, education, and public space, to crime and punishment-no matter what activists and residents do. These conditions demand a new approach to community organizing: one that not only takes regional developments into account, but can also affect them.

Thankfully, the past decade has seen a spate of scholarship, policy analysis, foundation-sponsored funding initiatives, and, most importantly, social change efforts-all focused upon understanding and affecting regional area dynamics. "Regionalism"-a buzzword that sees the fate of cities and suburbs as intertwined-has become a new cottage industry (Swanstrom, 2001).

While there are different approaches to regionalism, some community-based urban organizers are making concerted efforts to reframe this policy discussion as a civil rights issue. Because regional dynamics affect people's opportunities and shape lives, a regional strategy has become, for a variety of activists, the key to achieving racial equity and economic justice. Along these lines, community-based organizations, radical labor unions, environmental justice groups, innovative policy institutes, and progressive law-makers are promoting a regional agenda that stresses equal outcomes as opposed to "equal opportunity." They view the latter concept-a mantra for opponents of affirmative action-as essentially spurious.

This essay analyzes the movement for regional equity and examines its potential for radical social transformation. More