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Our Equitable Development Updates, a monthly e-newsletter, highlights new research, upcoming events, advocacy campaigns, policy strategies, and promising practices from communities across the country.

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Mildred Thompson, the director of the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place, discusses the recent PolicyLink report,

Breathing Easy from Home to School: Fighting the Environmental Triggers of Childhood Asthma on The Celsias Show.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Regional equity is part of a broad and hopeful vision for full inclusion and sustainability and the focus of the recent PolicyLink summit in New Orleans. Distributed first to summit participants, Regional Equity and the Quest for Full Inclusion is the document that sets the scene for change. It examines the history of equity in America and how national and global forces are creating unique challenges and opportunities. It concludes with a vision of the future characterized by shared economic prosperity and true participatory democracy, one where everyone--including people of color and residents of low-income communities--can contribute and benefit.

For press coverage from Regional "Equity '08: The Third National Summit on Equitable Development, Social Justice, and Smart Growth," click here.

Smart, equity-focused transit oriented development (TOD) pdf creates compact, mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented communities -- located around new or existing public transit stations -- to achieve a number of different objectives: reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, lower residents' transportation costs, promote walking and health, ease traffic congestion, and improve environmental quality.

The new TOD tool (pdf), the latest in the PolicyLink Equitable Development Toolkit, focuses on how to implement TOD in a way that achieves equity goals. Check out the TOD tool for strategies and lessons learned, so that you can advocate for equitable transit oriented development.

Browse to TOD tool (html) in Equitable Development Toolkit.

“Below the Line: The Changing Face of American Poverty,” a provocative series profiling a vast range of people living at or below the poverty line in the United States, critically examines what it looks like to be poor in America today.

Angela Glover Blackwell frames each installment from a public policy perspective, while respective experts offer insight and strategic solutions on a number of issues faced by a growing number of Americans.

To listen to the whole series, or to discuss the different installments, link to Equity Blog.

Transforming Community Development with Land Information Systems, a new report released by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy describes how community organizations are using property data to revitalize urban areas and create affordable housing where it is most needed.

PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity by Lifting Up What Works.®

Three Years Later:

Residents Still Battered by Storms Beyond Their Control

A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008 examines how renters and homeowners have fared since Katrina, Rita, and floods destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. With extensive data and information on where rental housing units are coming back -- outlining the gaps that remain for many homeowners, along with snapshots of heavily damaged neighborhoods -- this report puts hard numbers on the experiences of residents on the ground.

Progress has been made, but Louisianans still face a long road home. Find the report at www.policylink.org/ThreeYearsLater or click here to download PDF.

See recent media coverage:

Click here to see full coverage of the report.

Understanding Climate Change: An Equitable Framework

When the hurricanes hit in 2005, more than 1,500 people died in NewOrleans alone. There is no doubt that better disaster management practices will be needed to respond to the impacts of climate change, including increased flooding, drought, wildfires, and stronger hurricanes. The destruction wrought by these storms reveals how the interaction of forces—energy use, environmental degradation, climate change and financial vulnerability—puts low-income communities of color at greatest risk.

As the world grapples with other effects of climate change and global warming, the need to understand the embedded issues associated with these complex ecological transformations becomes clear. Understanding Climate Change: An Equitable Framework (pdf) contributes to a deeper understanding of the issues, and considers the equity consequences and implications associated with global warming.

Trouble The Water: A View of Hurricane Katrina from the Inside

At our recent Regional Equity 08 summit, attendees viewed clips from Trouble the Water, a film that tells the story of a young New Orleans' couple—trapped by the deadly floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina—who courageously survive the storm and its calamitous aftermath. It chronicles their flight from home and their quest to rebuild their lives and Lower Ninth Ward community.

It's a powerful story of community fortitude in the face of adversity, and a look into one of the most defining moments in our recent history.

There are a number of action steps to get the word out about the film and the issues it raises. Download the "Take Action Now" brochure for details.

Trouble the Water is directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and Executive Produced by Joslyn Barnes and Danny Glover of Louverture Films.

Renewing the Promise of Smaller Industrial Cities

Our nation's smaller industrial cities canbe attractive, welcoming places to live. Despite challenges, they possess tremendous assets and amenities and deserve our coordinated attention and action, according to the report, To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities.

Cities like Scranton, Pa., Kalamazoo, Mich., and Youngstown, Ohio, are increasingly seen as the “best of both worlds”—simultaneously offering many of the amenities of big cities and the community-spirit of small-towns.

Smart and bold local leadership in these cities have made them incubators of some of the nation’s most innovative public policy ideas, bringing opportunity and hope to all their residents.

To Be Strong Again offers a vision and an action agenda for ensuring that smaller industrial cities take their righthful places within America's diverse and healthy metropolitan regions.

To view media coverage of this report, click here.