In a time of ‘DEI’ backlash, small and midsized cities are driving inclusive economic growth

Unfortunately, the tide has taken a sharp turn in the few years since then—an all-too-common backlash and retrenchment pattern observed in movements for racial inclusion over the last century. Every day, new headlines propagate, attacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—and what political opponents label “wokeness”—while applauding restrictive court decisions and legal challenges to racial inclusion initiatives. Not surprisingly, another high-stakes presidential election is both fanning the flames of opposition and sharpening the nation’s sense of what’s at stake.

Yet, many of these debates mask the meaningful, evidence-driven, and encouraging efforts taking place in communities across the country, especially in smaller cities and regions. Today, regional and local stakeholders—including civic, business, nonprofit, philanthropic, and community leaders—are working together to drive tangible, evidence-driven initiatives to advance racial equity and inclusion, and help create more just and opportunity-rich communities for all.

Despite perceptions, many small and midsized cities are innovating on inclusive solutions to national racial equity challenges

Over the past two decades, much of the nation’s economic growth has been concentrated in “superstar metros” centered on cities such as Boston, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. And when it comes to addressing inequality, much attention also goes to these large cities, which tend to register significantly greater levels of income inequality than their smaller counterparts.

Small and midsized cities (SMCs), on the other hand, can often go underrecognized but are, in fact, vital economic engines. As emphasized in a recent Brookings report, SMCs—defined as cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000—are now ground zero for realizing the promise of inclusive economic growth in America.

SMCs were the focus of the inaugural Cityscapes Summit, hosted earlier this summer in Durham, N.C., by the New Growth Innovation Network, a leading, national nonprofit focused on supporting practitioners to advance inclusive economic development (resources for SMC leaders available here). Cityscapes gathered over 400 leaders from 75 SMCs to exchange best practices for advancing community wealth building, improving capital access, and evolving systems to provide equal opportunity for all. Concurrently, Brookings Metro has been convening its Regional Inclusive Growth Network, a collaborative learning and action network of civic leaders from eight SMCs, designed to catalyze regional, cross-sector action to advance business norms and practices that unlock more racially inclusive growth.

At the opening session of Cityscapes, Yasmina McCarty, economic development expert and President and CEO of NGIN, spotlighted key characteristics and assets of SMCs that position them to be leaders in advancing inclusive growth:

• SMCs have demonstrated civic capacities to engage with communities and across sectors;
• SMCs can be uniquely nimble, compared to large cities and their public and private institutions; and
• SMCs tend to have a stronger sense of pride in their cities and communities.

Leaders across the nation’s SMCs are harnessing these assets to develop and implement innovative strategies for ensuring that the benefits of economic growth reach all corners of their population, especially the Black and Brown communities that have historically been left behind.

A full account of the innovative local initiatives and strategies discussed at Cityscapes is beyond the scope of this piece (the list of all 70+ expert speakers is available here). Across the wide range of initiatives, however, one unifying theme was the critical importance of new forms of collaboration that can drive systemic change; and that work requires the deliberate activation of four key inputs:

• People: Individuals, organizations, and communities are well-recognized as core drivers of inclusive growth. Yet regions need more than collaboration among the usual suspects: community, and economic development actors each working within their own, siloed, and often segregated networks of trusted partners. Instead, approaches should consciously and pragmatically build new and sustained relationships across organizations, sectors, and communities, particularly those communities that have for too long been shut out from economic development decisionmaking.
• Place: In most cities, there are gaps between growth-focused efforts at the regional scale and inclusion-focused efforts at the neighborhood scale, as well as siloes and legacies of distrust between community leaders and city and regional leaders due to legacies of urban renewal and public disinvestment. Ensuring that regional economic development initiatives are developed in conjunction with community-centered, equity-focused initiatives at the neighborhood level, will lead to more durable, scalable interventions for inclusive growth.
• Policy: In many cases, state and federal policies set “the rules of the game,” defining performance metrics, eligibility of recipients and uses of public money, and priorities that shape incentives and thus local and regional decision-making. Fortunately, federal policymakers, and a diverse range of state governments as well, have shifted policies to incentivize more inclusive processes and outcomes, from the beginning stages of identifying core stakeholders and selecting priorities to later steps of allocating resources, reducing barriers to entry, and executing and evaluating strategy implementation.
• Practice: Status quo approaches to community and economic development have revealed, time and time again, that a rising tide does not lift all boats; rather, they have often concentrated wealth and opportunity in the hands of a few. To ensure equal opportunity, and to realize the full potential of the nation’s regions and economies, it is important to evolve community and economic development approaches to expand wealth-building opportunities—and make sure they deliver as hoped—in historically disinvested communities.

Below, we highlight just a few examples of Brookings Metro research discussed during Cityscapes that help illustrate the activation of the four key inputs for systemic change, all of which have engaged SMCs in developing actionable frameworks and tools to advance racially inclusive economies:

With these emerging, more inclusive approaches to collaboration, local and regional leaders can drive a new wave of systemic change to enable inclusive, broad-based economic growth and prosperity. And small and midsized cities will be important ones to watch.