When It Comes to Equity, Region Has Mixed Results

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- With questions of fairness regularly dominating the local news, it is difficult to deny equity issues are among the most pressing and controversial facing the Buffalo-Niagara region today. This inevitably raises the provocative question: "How fair and equitable is our region?"

The Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, a major public service program of the University at Buffalo, investigates this challenging question in its new report, "State of the Region Progress Report 2002: Equity in Buffalo-Niagara," the third in a series of State of the Region reports.

Despite a more than century-long trend of equity reform, and ongoing collaborative efforts in the region to sustain this progress, the report reveals mixed results for Buffalo-Niagara.

A majority of the report's performance measures -- including 10 new equity indicators such as AIDS cases, classroom diversity and public-meeting accommodations -- points to a region falling far short of parity in three key areas:

o access to resources,

o representation and access to decision making and

o educational and economic opportunity.

Moreover, half of the 10 equity indicators updated in this report, including measures of housing discrimination and intergenerational equity, regressed compared to the 1999 State of the Region baseline report, while the remainder, such as interfaith relationships and sexual orientation, did not change or showed only mixed progress.

"Progress Report 2002" is intended to stimulate, and even provoke, an informed conversation on this complex issue, reveal the scope of the challenges that lay ahead and prompt deliberate action toward continued equity progress.

Through compelling and relevant data, including multiple surveys and in-depth research of the region's equity history, the report explores a variety of important equity-related concerns, from access to health care and the extent of the digital divide to patterns of residential segregation and perceptions of discrimination.

"As with the entire State of the Region effort, our primary purpose in this report is to improve the base of information on important issues within the region," said Institute Executive Director John B. Sheffer, II.

"A related purpose is to encourage the region to consider that we ought to value diversity in our community, rather than be intimidated by it," he continued. "This is not only for societal reasons, but for economic reasons as well. Some places such as Toronto understand the value of diversity and benefit in many ways, including economically."

As are its predecessor reports, "Progress Report 2002" is based upon the fundamental principle, "you can't manage what you can't measure." Initiated in 1999 and updated in 2000, and now 2002, the State of the Region project informs public debate and policy decisions, and motivates action with measurable analyses of crucial regional issues.

Unlike the first two reports, which presented or updated 100 performance measures on 11 topic areas, from education and the environment to health and human services, this most recent report focuses on a single one of those 11 topic areas -- equity.

"Equity is difficult to measure," said Kathryn A. Foster, institute research director and associate professor and chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the UB School of Architecture and Planning. "Data are scarce and quantifying fairness is a continuing challenge. Compounding the challenge is that equity issues often involve conflicting values and perspectives."

The report, however, maintains its commitment to monitoring other areas critical to regional vitality in its analysis of 19 indicators, which likewise reveals a mixed picture. Of those performance measures, only three progressed -- air fares, regional cooperation and residential development. Eight -- cost of living and cardiovascular health, for example -- regressed while six remained unchanged or showed only mixed progress.

Drawing upon more than a year of intense research, data gathering and analysis, and consultation with the community, "Progress Report 2002" -- funded by a challenge grant of The John R. Oishei Foundation matched by the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, Cameron Baird Foundation, Josephine Goodyear Foundation, Grigg-Lewis Foundation, and M&T Bank Charitable Foundation -- consists of two main components.

The first contains the 10 new equity performance indicators, 10 updated equity indicators and 19 indicators in other key topic areas. For each performance measure there is a review of regional performance, either an analysis of progress or regress toward goals or an outline of short-term and long-term goals and a series of recommended action steps for the private, nonprofit and public sectors.

The second component, a 54-page booklet, consists of an in-depth review of the region's equity history ("Demographic Snapshot: Buffalo-Niagara, 1900, 1950, 2000 and A Century of Equity in Buffalo-Niagara"); a summary of findings of the institute-administered "Western New York Equity Survey 2002" and a culminating section that synthesizes three "Cross-Cutting Challenges" from State of the Region performance measures, Equity Survey data, news accounts, and community initiatives.

"In the end, the report distills the region's equity challenges into three gaps in parity that cut across the boundaries of social and demographic classifications -- access to resources, economic and educational opportunity, and decision-making power and representation," said Barry B. Boyer, a State of the Region project director and UB law professor. "This will help the community focus its action toward progress in the region."

As with earlier State of the Region reports, the goal of this progress report is to hold a mirror up to the region. "This report particularly focuses on issues of equity and fairness in the Buffalo-Niagara region," Sheffer added. "Our hope continues to be that an improved base of information as well as reliable, up-to-date data will assist community leaders in making informed policy decisions and judgments."