This issue of Urban Habitat’s journal, Race, Poverty, and the Environment, presents an analysis of transportation equity that can help build the movement for civil rights and environmental justice. Featuring contributions from leading practitioners in the field and a cross-section of voices from the grassroots, it reveals a transportation and land use system that harms urban quality of life; damages the planetary environment; promotes wars for resource domination; and supports racism and class-based segregation. Published on the 50th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, this issue also draws on historical victories in transportation equity—such as the initial desegregation of public transit—to help identify the pressure points in the system which present opportunities for progress.
In every urban center in the country there are organizations challenging unequal access to transportation, coalitions fighting the burdens which international goods movement places on poor communities, and groups struggling for systemic reforms. This issue presents many case studies of successful local organizing from the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and other communities of color.