In this episode, Stephen Goldsmith interviews Tucson's Chief Equity Officer Laurice Walker and Equity Data Manager Laura Sharp about using data and mapping to reshape city policies and services to prioritize equity, and how to lay the groundwork for lasting transformation.
In this episode, Stephen Goldsmith interviews Tucson's Chief Equity Officer Laurice Walker and Equity Data Manager Laura Sharp about using data and mapping to reshape city policies and services to prioritize equity, and how to lay the groundwork for lasting transformation. They discuss the city's equity framework the Tucson Equity Data Strategy and why it's important to leverage multiple types of data for impactful decisions.
Music credit: Summer-Man by Ketsa
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Betsy Gardner:
This is Betsy Gardner, editor of Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. And you're listening to Data-Smart City Pod, where we bring on the top innovators and experts to discuss the future of cities and how to become data smart.
Stephen Goldsmith:
This is Stephen Goldsmith, a professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard. And we have another podcast, a particularly interesting one, dealing with a city that's taken a very aggressive stance to equity issues. And we're delighted to have Laurice Walker and Laura Sharp from the Equity Office and let me start by both welcoming you and maybe in turn asking each of you to tell us a little bit about your background and what you do for the city of Tucson. Let's go to Laurice, you're in the upper left-hand corner of my picture, let's have you go first.
Laurice Walker:
Thank you for having me and thank you all for being interested in the work that we're doing. So, I came into the city of Tucson in 2022 as their inaugural Chief Equity Officer. This is the first time that the city has put into place an opportunity to advance equity for the constituents and the communities that they're serving. The purpose and the direction from mayor and council for the Equity Office was to come in and to look at our organizational practices our service delivery and our policies to make sure that the services that we are offering to our constituents are truly accessible. And a big piece of that, part of my framework when I came in, I said, ‘hey, we need to look at data, we need to look at our current practices. And then we also need to look at what and where do we want to be in the future from now? How do we want to use equity and make sure that it's truly accessible for those that we're serving?’
My background comes from organizational psychology, so I spend a lot of my time looking at how individuals behave and how organizations behave as it pertains to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. So, the top pillars for doing our work in the implementation of the Equity Office has been looking at capacity building for both our internal and external stakeholders. It has been assessing our current and past programmatic policies that the city has implemented and then it's using data informed decisions to make sure that we are looking at a trajectory where constituents and residents can truly access the services that we offer as an organization.
Stephen Goldsmith:
How long has your office been in existence?
Laurice Walker:
Fairly new, I have been here since March of 2022. So just under a couple of years, two years – we're coming upon our third year this March.
Stephen Goldsmith:
All right, thanks. And Laura, why does a city need an equity geek anyway?
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, so my role is really helping the Office of Equity figure out how to use data to make its decisions. I think without data, you're it's not really clear where you stand on equity, who is being helped and who is missing out. And without that, you don't really know how to direct your resources. So, I'm here to not only help figure out, you know, how we can use data to make those decisions, but also help everyone else in the city figure out how they can use data in their own work. So not just making the big decisions but affecting all of the little everyday decisions that city staff make.
Stephen Goldsmith:
So, while we're talking to you, Laura, explain to us if you would the city's Equity Priority Index…what does the index consist of? And then I'm going to go back to Laurice and ask her, kind of, how is the index used? But first what is the Index? What do you measure? Where does the data come from? How do you visualize that data? Just a little bit about the process, please?
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, definitely. So, the Tucson Equity Priority Index is part of the city's framework for assessing how we prioritize new initiatives, policies, and programs throughout the city. It's a geographic resource that the city can use, but it's also available to any local entities who might find it useful. If people aren't familiar with it, an index like this, it's really taking multiple variables and rolling them up into one map layer that gives an at a glance picture of where we need to be prioritizing our decisions. And what it's made of, the variables that we've chosen, are 12 different demographic factors that are understood to contribute to vulnerability. And by vulnerability, we mean communities that are more likely to be harmed or negatively affected in tough situations, like money trouble, family issues, they lost their job. So, these people often have reduced capacity or resilience and recovery, so they not only face more significant challenges during crises but take longer to recover from them. The variables we chose, based on a lot of different indices around the country and based on community input, are things like housing cost burden, being below poverty, not speaking English well, not having college education, things like that.
Stephen Goldsmith:
How about inequitable aspects of the built environment like sidewalks, green spaces? Tell us which ones of those things you measure and how that affects vulnerability?
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, so, in this Index we're not taking those things into effect. This is strictly demographic and the reason for that – I think what you're describing is more of an opportunity index, which I have been part of creating one of those for the city that we didn't end up using. And the idea is that by having a demographic focused Index, the departments and programs can bring in their own data to look at demographic vulnerability and then sidewalk quality or then broadband coverage or existence of trees. So, by not baking that into the index, it makes it easier to bring it in later and have more focused approaches for the different departments.
It's kind of like the foundation that we provide. If people don't have additional data that they want to incorporate, they can use it as it is. But if they come with heat data, tree data, and I want to combine this into a tree equity index or a pavement equity index, this is the foundation that they build that on. So, it's not that we're not interested in all of those things, but we didn't want them to be sort of in the Index itself to try to keep it a little bit more lean, right?
Stephen Goldsmith:
So Laurice, there are lots of questions for both of you. Let's just kind of stay with this for a second. So, let's say that health is on your indices…that maybe the reason that an area has high rates of diabetes or absenteeism that deals with lack of green spaces in their neighborhood. How do you translate the Index into the policies of the Parks and Transportation Department, for example?
Laurice Walker:
Yeah, so, one of the big ways that we've been using this is with our budget, right? When organizations tackle this work, we often want to encourage them to put their money where their mouth is. So, one of the big things that we've been using this for is to help departments shift their thinking about how they're spending their resource allocation in relationship to the services they're offering that impact our vulnerable populations. So, we have developed something called the equity budget analysis. This is our third year using that for the city's budget process where we're asking all of our departments across the city to look at four different areas. They're looking at the impact of their services on vulnerable populations. They're looking at the data usage, ‘how did they use data such as this Equity Priority Index to inform their decision making around their budget for the next fiscal year?’ We're asking them to look at engagement, how do they engage their constituents or their service receivers on the other end of the service delivery with their internal or external customers? And then we're also looking, what's that accountability feedback loop, right? How are we showcasing the success and the challenges of the service delivery that we're trying to utilize for the populations that we're serving? So, using our Priority Index has been a helpful tool to help departments make those decisions, to your question about ‘how will you use this data to inform your policies going forward?’ How will you use this data to think about ‘Ok, maybe we need to prioritize, maybe allocating fiscal dollars to one neighborhood or one street pavement that has historically been disinvested compared to this street or neighborhood that had their street repaid five years ago.’ How do we make sure that we are making it an equitable playing field to ensure that those who have not had the most recent investment get up to par with those who are operating at a sufficient standard right now. So we've been using – and our budget process has been super tremendous watching our departments just change year after year – and shifting our thinking, that's how we get to a level of success: shifting your thinking about how you spend your resource allocation to make sure that equity is that every constituent and citizen in our city has access to the resources and the services that the city is providing.
Stephen Goldsmith:
So, not to make this too personal, but I envision you in front of a room with a big GIS map saying to these folks ‘see there are no sidewalks over there and there's no park over here and you should take that into your capital plan.’ Do you use maps and visuals as part of your advocacy for equity?
Laurice Walker:
Absolutely. The reason why you know, data was the first priority, was because we need to know where we've been, we need to know where we are, to inform where we're going. And we can't do that if we don't have that information, which is data – interviews is data, storytelling is data, and then you have the numerical data that's collected, right? And all that packaged up will tell us where we've been, where we are, and then what we should be going. And, you know, I've been in – this is my third inaugural office. So, this is the third time that I've started from the beginning. And I can tell you it's been crucial for organizations to know where they've been. Oftentimes people who say we want to do equity, DEIA work, they don't know or understand the complexity of where they've been. And another piece, and we could talk all day, some projects that have happened across Arizona or in Tucson specifically, you know we've been looking at the racial covenant stuff, right? That's a big one, when you talk about redlining and geographical cases of where people have been segregated historically and some of the inequities in housing, right? And that's just not hitting Tucson, that's hit every major metropolitan city across the country in the history, right? Yet it's still the founding principle on the largest inequities we see from community to community. Many cities don't unpack those conversations. They don't look at that data, they don't assess that data. And, most importantly, they don't even use that to inform how they're going to make decisions. So, we have been trying to figure out how to use that internally with the information that we do have access to on a department service level. But when you think about the demographic level of outside the city and looking at housing, it's a much, much, much deeper conversation.
I'm going to give it back to Laura to talk more about that because that is her specialty. Making sure that those who are looking at those maps truly understand the story and the picture at the same time because often they get missed, right? Some people might understand the picture, but they don't really get the story. And that's where I think we have a uniqueness with our work of using data to really put into narration of the lived experiences of our communities.
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, so throughout the city really do use these maps to guide decisions every day. So, I've been working with someone in the Transportation Department who is voting on different applications for pedestrian installations, pedestrian friendly sidewalks and crossings and things like that. And she has to use the map to help score these different applications. So, if you're in a high or moderate high priority zone, your application is going to get more points. We have a Ward Office who's using it to allocate funding for speed humps. So, if you are in an area that is a high priority area and you requested a speed hump, you're more likely to get that. So, everyone that I work with, they've said ‘yes, can you get me that layer and how can we start incorporating it in our work?’ And I've seen them use it in public meetings and things like that to say this is why we made this decision.
Part of what is important about how we're working with departments to use this is that the demographic data in the Index, no matter what they bring to it, the demographic data will be the same across departments and we're making sure that this Index is automated. So, it will be updated annually with the most recent estimates that we have. And the reason for that is that previously we had these indices and departments were making up their own. And so, we had a tree equity index and neighborhood vulnerability index, a mobility equity index. And they all use different definitions of what that means. So, one of them focuses only on people over 65 and one of them uses area median income instead of the federal poverty limit and it created kind of chaos. And well, what does the city mean when they say vulnerability or equity? And so, this is kind of a way to allow departments to customize it without creating a bunch of different tools.
I think that the mayor's Tucson Million Trees Campaign is a really good example. It doesn't use this Index, but it does use a different one, an earlier version. And that's guided the whole Million Trees Campaign on where we're planting trees, where we're putting green storm water infrastructure. So that's kind of a high-level case in the city.
Stephen Goldsmith:
You would help them understand where they need trees or what the heat index is or other policy making levers? I know this is just part of the famous TEDS, the Tucson Equity Data Strategy that a lot of folks talk about. What other parts of the TED Strategy are there?
Laurice Walker:
So right now, Laura is working on getting the community input right now. So, we're launching a big public engagement campaign to hear from the community. Oftentimes agencies tell the community what makes them vulnerable. We are really trying to hear from the community themselves to tell us what they think is a priority and how we should be supporting them and what we think about resource allocation.
The other piece of that is educational alignment, right? We want to make sure that when we're talking about the Equity Index and equity and how do we get to prioritizing our decisions and our policies. We want to make sure that both folks on the end of the spectrum are educated and they understand and we have shared terminology, shared understanding of what this work means, both internally with our elected leaders, our department leadership and then our professional staff of the organization, but also externally with our community champions our leaders in the neighborhood associations, but then also our constituents and our community. We want to make sure that the community and everyone is aligned when we talk about equity and what this means.
I think the other piece of this TED Strategy again, like you said it's one piece, but it's really going to set us up for that longevity of transformational change. Oftentimes when these offices are created, folks are looking for quick transactional things but equity work and reducing disparities and ensuring that our community has the opportunity to have access and thrive and prosper…it takes time to do that work and we have to be intentional from the beginning and the implementation of that process all the way through evaluation, reallocating resources, and then making sure that we have a game plan to sustain the success and the growth that we want to see on the trajectory.
Stephen Goldsmith:
Kate Coleman and I wrote a book on Collaborative Cities and trying to advance the theory that story maps, maps can bring people together so that they understand things in a shared way, right? They may not live in a vulnerable community, but if they can see it, they may understand it, it may allow the city to build up support. So, to either one of you, how do you think about the role of story maps in terms of building up support for the initiatives that would redress these equity issues?
Laura Sharp:
I'm a big fan of story maps. There's something that I actually wrote about in my dissertation as a really important tool to bring together the sort of top-down approach of mapping and that sort of embodied emotional feel of people on the ground. So, I do think that it's something that I use a lot in my work. So, we've developed one for TEDS kind of explaining what TEDS is. But we'll also be developing more of those, especially around the Index and around the variables that make up the Index to kind of help walk people through that, so they can see that. And I think getting actual stories from people on the ground would make that resonate more.
Stephen Goldsmith:
Just got a couple more question. Laurice, help me think through…we've been working on this idea that there's a comprehensive neighborhood redevelopment where communities that have been ignored. When we think about how to redo their sidewalks and their greenways and their health access and their transit access. How could either TEDS or your work lead to Tucson making comprehensive place-based decisions that would help lift up a neighborhood?
Laurice Walker:
I think it's a combination of a multitude of things. I think using what this data strategy is, is going to be the basis of that because oftentimes folks wouldn't know what the data is to support that. What are the facts of that. And oftentimes people say either the data is not there, which has historically happened in a lot of government agencies and large institutions doing this work, they just didn't collect the data, or they collected it and no one had access to it.
But one of the big moves that we've been making across the organization, as Laura mentioned earlier, is we're trying to push the data movement across our city beyond just the Equity Office and beyond the demographic data collection. So that's one big piece as an organization, you need to be committed to collecting that data, analyzing that data, and then using that data to inform your decisions and your processes going forward. So that's one way we're using that. I think the other way that we're talking about as an organization is making sure that our strategic alignment with our mayor council priorities are also set up in the same direction. We have internal stakeholders, and we have external stakeholders. We want to hear from the community ‘what is important to you when we talk about policy work, when we talk about program service delivery from an equity lens,’ but then also internally, what do department need to be successful to be able to deliver on these goals that we set? We know that departments are unique, but we also know that we need to support them in their own unique pathways to get to this overall ability and access that the community needs. There is no one way to get there, but I do know that you have to be strategic, but you also have to be patient in this work because again, I was talking earlier that it's not transactional, it's truly transformational and you have to keep your community involved at every step of the process.
When I came on board, one of the first things that I always tell my colleagues, I tell anyone that I'm talking to, trust and transparency is so important in this work and it's so important in our communities because historically, those who've been disinvested, don't have trust in our local government systems, right? So, we have to one rebuild that but then also maintain that. And that's true to internal and external stakeholders.
Stephen Goldsmith:
Can we get back to housing for a second? Communities that have been redlined, historically, suffer more than just bad housing. There's a whole set of consequences that have…afflicted, if that's the right word, communities that have been redlined. S, if you look in TEDS at redlining, then what does the city do about that broadly? I know it must take steps with respect to housing. But what other consequential actions occur to help communities that have been kind of legally put in the back of the priority list over time.
Laurice Walker:
So, one thing, we the city did not do the research project for the racial covenants project. That was the University of Arizona. I was a chair member on there as a representative from the city and it's also through the Recorder in the county that has been trying to take necessary steps to support some of the desired changes of what historical redlining has looked like. So, different proposals have been put out, you know, you can't legally change what has been put in someone's deed, but you can potentially add sufficient language saying that ‘I as the current homeowner of this property don't support the historical language of redlining or racial covenant on this housing deed.’ That's what many metropolitan cities across the country that have been doing – Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, folks like that have been doing that. Tucson is exploring what those opportunities look like. And again, that project is housed out of the University of Arizona.
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, I would point out that we have a commission on equitable housing and part of that is the housing desegregation sub-committee. And we have been joining those meetings in the past several months. I did a presentation on TEDS to help them understand what tools we're making available to them. And I think that it's still something that they're trying to wrap their head around and we have a meeting coming up with them where we're really trying to define what housing equity means. And so, we're kind of asking the commission of experts to work with us, but we really want them to be the guides on that, so it's still kind of a work in progress.
Stephen Goldsmith:
What that's going to look like – the city, the county, and the university began this approach to housing with a Neighborhood Vulnerability Index that looked at five factors that signal vulnerability. I'm just curious how those five factors relate to your larger list?
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, so that is one of the in indices that I mentioned that we used previously. Basically, the Index is part of TED, and TEDS is expanding on that. So, it's incorporating the other elements that were in the tree equity index or the equity mobility index, to try to make sure that we're covering all of the demographics that we know that city staff are interested in focusing on. So, we wanted to make sure that it had use for everyone in all departments. And that's kind of how we came to that.
Stephen Goldsmith:
How are you using the data tools, including mapping, to engage the public and open up the data in a way that it provides two way communication?
Laura Sharp:
Yeah, I just talked about the other parts of TEDS – which are the demographic collection standards where we're providing templates, Survey123, web connect templates – to make sure that it's really easy for people to collect demographics in their work and use that to understand whether they're hearing from all of the populations and understanding the differences in what they need. We are also providing an open data site where we're providing Census data that's pre-apportioned to all of the city's geographies to make the easier to use, so that our staff don't need to be GIS experts to find the demographics of the neighborhood for instance.
And we also have a demographic look up app that is designed for people who don't have any data experience, but they can just click on any point in Tucson, tell it what demographics they're interested in, and it'll generate a really nice looking infographic that they can use for grants or to put in a presentation without really having to know anything about how data works. And that's all designed to make data as accessible as possible.
Stephen Goldsmith:
So, you're doing both doing terrific work…think forward, 2 or 3 or 4 years or more. You've done these maps, you've you visualize the inequities, you've created a criteria related to vulnerability, everybody's watching it. Laurice tells us the city officials are making decisions based on your data. What's that data look like? What do those maps look like?
Laura Sharp:
Well, I think the biggest thing is that we're going to just have a better understanding of where our services are inequitable. Where are we prioritizing the people who have traditionally been prioritized? So, I'm not sure that we will see the Index itself change, that will be changing vulnerability, but we will be providing the resources to everyone. And I think we'll see that all of the departments, whether it's Roads and Parks and planning zones, all of these are going to be spread out more evenly in those areas that maybe you're not seeing them currently.
Stephen Goldsmith:
This is Steve Goldsmith, thanking Laurice Walker and Laura Sharp at the Tucson Equity Office for their terrific insights and their great work. Thank you so much.
Betsy Gardner:
If you liked this podcast, please visit us @datassmartcities.org. Find us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast was hosted by Steven Goldsmith and produced by me, Betsy Gardner. Thanks for listening.