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What Cities Can Do Now to Advance Racial and Economic Equity

It’s time to act — and many city governments around the country are.

By Simone Brody, Beth Blauer, Michael Hallsworth, Michele Jolin, and Jeff Liebman

This month marks the year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic — a year where America’s deep racial divisions sparked an overdue public reckoning. Cities were inevitably at the center as residents across the country demanded change, with the pandemic highlighting public health disparities and continued incidents of police brutality against Black Americans underscoring the tragic realities of systemic racism.

Over the past year, our organizations have worked through the What Works Cities initiative to continue to support cities as they rise to meet the needs of their residents. Communities across the country are making important progress in addressing the public health crisis that has consumed our lives.

And, even though cities have been driving equity work prior to the pandemic, many more are now publicly prioritizing their commitment to changing government structures and practices in service of better, more equitable outcomes. Twenty-eight American cities, for example, are participating in WWC’s City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery program, which is helping cities confront their budget challenges while strengthening their commitment to equity in the wake of COVID-19.

The American Rescue Plan, with its forthcoming $350 billion in funding for state and local governments creates a powerful opportunity for cities to spotlight the question: “How can cities dismantle systems of racism in government and invest in lasting and meaningful change?”

Here are three important ways cities can work to advance equity, drawn from What Works Cities partners’ work around the country:

1. Public communication and commitment to specific equity goals;
2. Data gathering and analysis to identify and understand disparities; and
3. Alignment of spending and services to stated values and priorities.

1: Communication Is Core

Racial, economic, and health disparities persist because of harmful institutional policies and practices. City leaders should address them publicly, commit to advancing equity, and be held accountable for their commitments. For example, cities can:

• Speak openly about how current systems perpetuate poverty and discuss strategies for making concrete choices that will create change.
• Make public and measurable commitments about using data and evidence to drive systems and stakeholders towards representing a more equitable community — and then regularly publish updates on how they are achieving goals.
• Develop and pass a City Council resolution directing the city to advance a roadmap of actions, policy changes, and funding shifts, to achieve your residents’ needs. This could include a series of community listening sessions and a survey to engage the community on what steps should be taken.

See it in action: The City Council of Long Beach, CA, in June 2020 passed a resolution adopting a four-step Framework for Reconciliation to end systemic racism. Thirteen listening sessions and four community town halls followed, and the Council unanimously adopted the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative that emerged.

• Integrate racial equity tools into budget decisions, particularly as cities across the country consider how to address budget shortfalls and maximize the impact of American Rescue Plan funds to meet residents’ pressing needs. Cities can share publicly how they are prioritizing equity in budget decisions.

2: Data Illuminates Inequities

Any city that is serious about advancing equity needs to be serious about data. Collecting, publicly sharing, and leveraging data about residents and city services, and how the two interact, allows governments to better understand where and how city programs and departments meet the needs — or fail to meet the needs — of low-income communities and communities of color. By linking internal data sets or using external data sources like the Census or geospatial data, a city can get a stronger picture — and a more acute understanding — of where inequities exist and how to surgically combat them.

• Collect comprehensive data sets. Use varied sources to ensure demographic, geographic, and economic data collected to assess resident needs is neither biased nor incomplete. For example, consider integrating 311 data, survey data, evaluations from academics and nonprofits, and live sampling (e.g., how many streetlights are out in each neighborhood). Better, more equitable solutions can emerge when equity-related data variables are in the mix.

See it in action: When planning capital infrastructure projects, the City of Boston looked at the impact of projects on specific populations — black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and low income. Using this data, projects that would not have otherwise been selected were prioritized.

• Disaggregate data on your citywide challenges to expose disparate needs. If, for example, employment is a critical challenge for your city, go beyond overall employment numbers by breaking data down by neighborhood, race, and income levels and look at how unemployment figures map to these variables. Case in point: some of the most powerful insights from the Opportunity Atlas — a tool from Opportunity Insights that offers cities economic mobility data down to the neighborhood — come from its comparisons on the long-term income gap between low-income white children and low-income Black children who grow up on the same block.
• Measure service quality by neighborhoods and populations. This is a key way to hold city staff and vendors accountable for delivering high-quality services to everyone.

See it in action: Boulder, CO incorporated performance metrics into high-speed internet infrastructure construction contracts to ensure low-income neighborhoods were not disproportionately impacted by construction work. Consistent standards and timely construction in all areas of the city were required.

With revenue sharply down due to the pandemic, a new era of fiscal belt tightening has begun in cities across the country. There’s a real danger that budget cuts to programs, services, and staff will worsen existing inequities. With detailed data in hand, city leaders are better prepared to make choices about funding reductions equitably in the coming year.

3: Operational Decisions Are Inherently Value Statements

Budgets are moral documents, and as such, city leaders must ensure that how the city spends tax dollars expresses its stated values. But how a city designs programs and services, and who it hires to implement them, are also statements of values. Taking a close look at day-to-day operations and making necessary changes is central to advancing equity.

Here’s where cities can start:

• Grow city contracts with minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs). Set a public goal to both increase the number of local registered MWBEs and the number of contracts and grants going to these vendors. Conduct outreach to the vendor community to get new businesses bidding on and receiving city contracts. Consider holding a pre-solicitation conference so smaller and more diverse firms can learn about projects and potential contracts, and providing support to MWBEs to navigate the government contracting process.

See it in action: The City of Boulder did this prior to releasing its request for bids (RFB) for the fiber optic network project referenced above. In Asheville, NC, the city adopted a first-of-its-kind business inclusion policy, directing all procurement processes to be guided by MWBE participation goals. This, in conjunction with the city’s community outreach plan to better engage local minority businesses, is expected to lead to increased MWBE utilization.

• Engage diverse community stakeholders when designing services and programs, and deliver them more equitably. Stakeholders who will be directly affected should be engaged early in the design process and given a seat at the table. City officials should never assume they understand the lived experience of individuals and communities. Instead, they should go beyond traditional community engagement strategies to empower residents and community leaders. Programs should ideally be co-created with stakeholders to truly meet their needs and advance equity.

See it in action: The City of Charleston, SC revamped its request for proposals (RFP) process for an affordable housing development project to include deep stakeholder engagement and detailed guidance on key challenges and priorities. Philadelphia, PA’s new participatory budgeting effort will allow the city, for the first time in its history, to directly involve the community in city spending decisions.

• Assess practices that perpetuate structural racism and economic disparities. Review your city’s revenue sources and expenditures to identify those that play a role in creating and sustaining disparities, and revamp them to ensure equity and opportunity. One now commonly discussed fiscal area to focus on is fines. While they might generate revenue for cities, they often do so at a disproportionate and inequitable cost. Instead of levying penalties, consider bringing households and businesses into compliance through targeted outreach or other means.

Cities can expand this kind of assessment to operational practices as well, such as enrollment processes for early childhood education or recreation programs. While seemingly innocuous, they can inadvertently place burdens on residents who lack time and resources, acting as hurdles holding back families who might most benefit from the programs. Cambridge, MA, for example, overhauled its process for enrollment in early-childhood programs to remove such obstacles and dramatically increased the percentage of preschool seats offered to lower-income families.

Reality Checks

Finally, remember that no person and no government has all the answers. Across the country, cities are working to address long-standing racial and economic disparities — and they’re turning to outside equity experts for help. The Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), for example, works with cities to assess operations, programs, decision-making processes and economic mobility strategies. Other partners train leaders on the cultural competencies necessary to remain deeply engaged with advancing equity.

There are plenty of ways to make change and advance equity — what’s required first, and most crucially, is the will.

Simone Brody is Executive Director of What Works Cities at Results for America.

Beth Blauer is Executive Director at Johns Hopkins University Centers for Civic Impact.

Michael Hallsworth is Managing Director of Behavioral Insights Team North America.

Michele Jolin is the CEO of Results for America.

Jeff Liebman is Director of the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab.

What Works Cities (WWC) is a national initiative that empowers cities to tackle pressing community challenges and improve residents’ lives through data-driven decision making. Operating as a partnership between four national organizations, What Works Cities works directly with city leaders and staff by providing coaching and technical assistance, a range of online and in-person learning opportunities, and a growing nationwide professional network. All WWC support and learning opportunities are provided at no cost to our cities.