The Future of Cities: How Sprawl and Racism are Intertwined

The following conversation with Van Jones is an excerpt from the new book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPointPress, 2007) by Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs, and Jason Mark. You can read more about the book here.

Van Jones is a passionate civil rights and human rights advocate. He combines practical solutions to problems of social inequality and environmental destruction, focusing on green economic opportunities for urban America. Jones grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale Law School, and works and lives in Oakland, California. He is the Co-Founder and President of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which seeks to replace the U.S. incarceration industry with community-based solutions.

Q. For the first time in human history, more than 50 percent of people now live in urban areas. Where does the city fit in your conception of environmental sustainability?

VJ: Cities have the capacity to sink or save the planet. The future of all humanity, and most species and systems, will be determined by what we choose to do with cities. The idea that the environment is about critters and creeks is a thing of the past. We have to be thinking about these things in terms of consumption and disposal processes of mega-cities.

Q. Sprawl has a negative impact not only on farmland and open space but on life in urban areas. How did this pattern of sprawl and gentrification develop? Who wins and loses?

VJ: Sprawl is a response to racial fear and anxiety on the part of white elites. The 'burbs were designed as a vehicle to get away from people of color, investing more in the white infrastructure as they moved away from the city, and the neighborhoods where people of color live. The other side of that is the disinvestment for the communities that remain behind; the money follows the new suburban development. Those that remain in the inner city continue to lose in this scenario.

Q. You've talked about cities and land use as issues that interest many groups: the suburbanites, environmentalists, and inner-city residents. If both environmentalists and inner-city residents have an interest in stopping sprawl, what's preventing them from working together?

VJ: Racism. It is the reason that people move away from each other. People don't want to talk about why people call this a "good" neighborhood or that one a "bad" neighborhood, but often it has to do with the race of the people that live there. White people divorce themselves from the bad neighborhoods and move to the suburbs. The black community has a lot of built-up feelings about our history, about the racism we experience. There is some healing that needs to take place there, so these communities have some issues, and don't want to work with each other, necessarily. There are a lot of feelings there.

Q. Many environmentalists genuinely want to work with other communities to address these issues of common interest. What is thwarting those efforts?

VJ: Those folks often speak about working together through "outreach" -- outreach in the sense of "outreaching to" these people or those people. Outreaching to the black community: "Well, we outreached to them so 'they' could hear our agenda and get onboard with what we are saying." This, as opposed to saying "let's go make some friends," building relationships, creating relationships. Figuring things out from a place where everyone's views are included. Relationships are give and take, mutual aid and help. Outreaching is the white thing, it's about bringing folks into what you are doing, and does not necessarily convey understanding.

Q. What is the effect of the prison industrial complex (especially juvenile prisons) on communities, particularly communities of color, and how does that system impede progress toward a green city revolution?