2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Using Data for City and Regional Strategies 255
was becoming available, Metro staff and environmental advocates began
to explore the possibility of expanding on the purchase and protection
of natural areas that was initiated under a $136 million regional greenspaces
bond measure that had been approved by voters in 1995. Although
there had been significant analysis before the first greenspace bond measure
of the locations and allocations of natural assets to be acquired,
no analysis had specifically focused on equity and the distribution of
natural assets or their locations relative to disadvantaged populations.
Coincidentally, as the second greenspaces bond measure discussion
was building, CLF had launched a significant outreach effort to publicize
the soon-to-be published Regional Equity Atlas. As part of this outreach,
the coalition engaged the Environmental Justice Action Group and other
long-time environmental activists in a discussion about how to best use
the new information that the Regional Equity Atlas analyses had generated
around access to parks and natural areas. According to Labbe, it was
a “no-brainer” to apply what he and CLF had learned through the atlas
process to integrate equity into the regional policies that would underlie
the new bond measure.
Before the release of the Regional Equity Atlas, bond measure advocates
had considered including a capital grants program that, unlike the
regional and municipal shares that had made up the 1995 measure and
would remain the backbone of the new bond measure, could accommodate
unanticipated opportunities. In other words, the new bond measure
could include opportunistic purchases that were not specifically identified
as projects at the outset. According to Ron Carley (then CLF board
chair, now executive director of CLF), what further fueled the desire to
create more flexibility in the new bond measure at the neighborhood
level was the discontent that had been registered among some voters
who had supported the first bond measure but hadn’t seen any natural
area acquisition in their neighborhoods. 1 Often, these complaints came
from residents of fully built-out urban neighborhoods where natural
areas were scarce. Findings from the Regional Equity Atlas confirmed
that there were, in fact, park-deficient neighborhoods in the region, and
that these deficiencies were not being addressed by existing greenspace
policies and programs. By focusing on neighborhoods, this capital grants
program component could offer community groups and local planning
agencies the opportunity to begin to remedy these deficiencies.
Noting that “over one-third (36%) of the region’s population inside
the [urban growth boundary] lives farther than a quarter-mile linear