Why Equity is Key to Building Back Better

Last week, our Founder and CEO, Dr. Mariela Alfonzo, had the honor to be interviewed by Andrew Tuck, of Monocle’s The Urbanist podcast, about the need for a spatial-equity based recovery, which focuses on community-scale infrastructure that facilitates health, safety, environmental justice, and economic resiliency. The episode, which focused on how to build back more equitably, also included Sally Kneeshaw from URBACT (Chapter 1), a European exchange and learning programme promoting sustainable urban development, who discusses how Covid has highlighted the need for more gender-equal cities and Emily Hamilton, a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (Chapter 3), who speaks about the need for zoning reform to ensure more equitable development. Dr. Mariela Alfonzo’s remarks (Chapter 2) focused on her recent Slate piece, Building Back Better, but Better, in which she and her co-author, Sam Lubell, outline three pillars - data, community, and cooperation - needed to promote spatial justice to address inequitable disparities in access to good urban design and related quality of life outcomes. She also discusses State of Place’s project with the City of Philadelphia, which has tied the built environment (as measured by the State of Place Index) to Covid, various Covid-related comorbidities, environmental hazards, and neighborhood safety, and how evidence-based, data-driven citymaking can lead to more equitable, efficient, and effective planning, development, and policy.

We urge you to listen in to this important (female-led!!) discussion!