Frontline Communities Come First
Many of Los Angeles’ under-resourced communities, into which people were historically funneled based on their race, are now at risk from a new kind of sorting propelled by a red-hot real estate market. As these still-relatively-affordable areas become attractive to outsiders, long-time residents – low-income renters, fixed-income homeowners, small-business people – are at risk of being priced out. At the same time, these historically under-resourced communities face disproportionate harm and are least able to prepare for, and recover from, extreme heat and other deadly impacts of climate change. Our aim is to advance “economies of resilience”– ecological, cultural, and political – in households across the community so that residents can stay put, stay climate safe, and thrive in the neighborhoods they helped build.
An awareness of current issues in urban heat, water conservation, and energy production and use will help community members make change through local political systems. Everyone can be a part of advocating for cooler, healthier, and more democratic communities. Urban Renewable was founded to stimulate and support these solutions-driven efforts.
Philosophy and Vision
At Urban Renewable, we believe in:
Integrated Sustainability: We believe that by fortifying neighborhoods against the extremes of climate change, historic under-investment, and gentrification threats communities can generate truly sustainable resilience models.
Dwelling well: We strive to optimize innovation, information, and resource allocation so that residents in historically under-resourced communities can be climate safe and thrive. We also believe that those who build communities – character-wise and practically – should be able to stay in their neighborhoods if they choose to.
Positive Integration: Gentrification is not inevitable. The empowerment of residents to democratically and strategically guide the development process is key. There are political, planning, and policy safeguards that can be put in place to protect a district’s cultural integrity while promoting its economic development and environmental security. Such an intervention has the potential to produce a “positively integrated” rather than an “incompletely gentrified” community – one where household incomes have increased enough to attract development projects and improved goods, services, and jobs to the neighborhood but in ways that benefit everyone, especially long-established residents, and not just the speculators.
Mutual benefit: We support the ability to produce rather than merely consume green energy, as it is a form of self-determination that benefits the community and provides a public good. (We’re particularly bullish about democratizing clean energy.)
Listening: We acknowledge that communities know best, and that implementing solutions to the climate crisis and the racial wealth divide cannot be achieved at the expense of neighborhood integrity and comity. (See 20th-century “urban renewal” for why we feel so strongly about this.)