Cities are not constructed just out of brick and mortar. Their foundations are not made just out of concrete and steel. They are also undergirded by ethereal stuff. They are built on hopes and dreams and tenacity. From Lagos, to Bombay, to New York City, people flock to cities in search of opportunity and possibility. They come to cities to create a better future for themselves and their families and in so doing they contribute to the energy, character, and sustainability of the place. In her seminal book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Jane Jacobs wrote that "cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." The true promise of a city, then, can only be realized when it reflects and supports the aspirations of all of its residents. Where this is not the case, the foundation is weakened, the center cannot hold.
Ten years ago, when the levees broke in New Orleans, we watched as the forces of nature and poverty collided to disastrous effect. To be sure, all of the residents of that vibrant city were forever changed by Hurricane Katrina, but the storm and its aftermath also laid bare some uncomfortable truths. It was impossible not to notice the racial and socioeconomic context within which the tragedy played out. Hours upon hours of footage played on loop of people stranded on rooftops and of people who had just lost everything suffering the indignity of being crowded into unsanitary and inhospitable temporary shelters. It was impossible not to notice that most of those people were black and poor. Today, the city has made great strides in terms of rebuilding, but too many people, particularly people of color, remain disconnected from good education, jobs, and housing. While some parts of the city are thriving, others have yet to recover. Such structural inequities threaten the sustainability of the city as a whole. If there is one thing that Katrina taught us, it is that the success of a city's most vulnerable residents is inextricably connected to the future prospects for the entire city.
New Orleans is not alone in having its vulnerabilities exposed. This year, we have seen the long fuse of decades of disinvestment, mass incarceration, and disenfranchisement of people and communities of color in U.S. cities burst into flames. From Ferguson to Baltimore, the conversation about the intersections between race, inequality, and poverty have been thrust onto center stage. Meanwhile, in recent years we have seen people in cities around the world coming together in public places from Zuccotti Park to Tahrir Square to demand more equality, fairness, and inclusion. It is no accident that cities have been at the center of these movements. The belief that cities should be engines for national prosperity and individual opportunity and well-being is deeply ingrained and broadly acknowledged. As such, cities are often where the fight for these values will be waged.
While the challenges are many, the fight is far from lost. The fact that people in cities have increasingly been marching, organizing, and raising their voices against social, economic, and environmental injustices has elevated these issues and captured the global imagination. Cities are increasingly being looked to as the places where change really happens. At Living Cities, a collaborative of 22 foundations and financial institutions working together to address poverty and inequality in U.S. cities, we believe that this moment is ripe for the social-change field to work with citizens, communities, and each other in new ways and with renewed urgency.
We have been encouraged to see civic leaders in cities around the U.S. coming together to seize this moment. In our own eight-city Integration Initiative, cross-sector teams are taking on challenges like connecting low-income residents in Baltimore and New Orleans to jobs and driving reinvestment in ways that benefits residents in Detroit. And, the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network is using a data-driven collective-impact approach to ensure every child in their communities, regardless of income level, succeeds through education. Efforts like these are also increasingly exploring new ways to engage communities themselves to design solutions that better reflect their realities and meet their needs.
To make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, we must work to fundamentally reengineer our opportunity grid -- the structures, relationships and resources that impact people's life chances -- so that it works for (and is built by) everyone. For this reason, Living Cities is excited to support Goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals. We look forward to learning about audacious efforts in cities around the world.
This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post, "What's Working: Sustainable Development Goals," in conjunction with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposed set of milestones will be the subject of discussion at the UN General Assembly meeting on Sept. 25-27, 2015 in New York. The goals, which will replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015), cover 17 key areas of development -- including poverty, hunger, health, education, and gender equality, among many others. As part of The Huffington Post's commitment to solutions-oriented journalism, this What's Working SDG blog series will focus on one goal every weekday in September. This post addresses Goal 11.