Connecting Community Control of Infrastructure and Economic Development with Race and Privilege

Movement organizations, such as the Movement for Black Lives, and others, have advocated for community control both of law enforcement as well as government programs in part as a response to instances of police violence and brutality.1 Such groups have also called for economic justice reforms, including support for worker organizing centers, support and development of cooperative and social economy networks, and more.2 Community control of local development often manifests in the creation or expansion of transportation infrastructure and economic development subsidies. Law plays important, and often unacknowledged, roles in creating the conditions for automobile dominance.11 Greg Shill highlights how arbitrary and unenforced speed limits, land use policies favoring suburban single family home construction, and other regulatory laws subsidize driving of automobiles.12 These are perhaps less obvious ways that law and lawmakers shape transportation infrastructure planning. In June 2015, in Baltimore, the governor of Maryland cancelled a proposed transit rail line running through the neighborhood where Freddie Gray, a twenty-five year-old African American man was arrested, and subsequently died in police custody.13 The Red Line service was focused on transporting residents within the city, rather than bringing suburban residents into and away from the city center.14 The Maryland governor announced significant funding for additional road construction that focused on the Maryland suburbs serving the Washington, D.C., area.15 How should the goals of community control of transportation infrastructure be assessed? I offer a number of possible questions to ask when considering the efficacy of community control. Place-based tax incentives for economic development profess benefits to low-income communities-in reality, however, such incentive programs often further gentrification, rather than aid in achieving anti-poverty goals.16 States and cities that frequently are generous with tax subsidies to private companies for economic development remain stagnant with respect to other public investments, such as education spending.17 Observers are rightly skeptical of refashioned policies, such as the federal Opportunity Zone incentive program.