Census and Sensibility – understanding Alameda’s 2010 census results

Host: Lauren Meltzer

Producer: Lisa Denenmark 

This March, Alameda County Census released it’s results showing that in the past 10 years, Oakland lost roughly 33,000 Blacks and gained 10,000 Whites. Alameda county overall gained 93,000 Asians.  To some this kind of demographic change is a shock while to others, it is not surprising.

What does it all mean?  Are people leaving or being pushed out of Oakland's inner city? And how will these numbers impact philanthropy, community building and planning, regional equity and governmental policy?

Guests:

• Steve Spiker, director of Research & Technology at Urban Strategies Council, a social justice, community building and support nonprofit based in Oakland. He leads the Council’s GIS mapping team, research, evaluation and tech work. He is active with local youth groups and campaigns to end human trafficking and modern slavery and also runs Stealing Beauty Photography.
• Karen Chapple, associate professor of city and regional planning at UC-Berkeley. Karen also serves as associate director of the Institute of Urban & Regional Development and the director of the Center for Community Innovation.
• Carl Anthony, is founder of the Earth House Leadership Center (EHLC) in Oakland. EHLC builds healthy, just, and sustainable communities through education, training and multi-media communication tools. He’s the co-founder and former executive director of Urban Habitat Program, one of the U.S’s oldest environmental justice organizations. Carl was a Ford Foundation program officer in the Community and Resource Development unit, and has taught at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Columbia Universities. A leading voice on regional equity and social justice, Carl is co-founder with Paloma Pavel of the Breakthrough Communities Initiative.
•  Paloma Pavel, founder and president of Earth House is the former director of Strategic Communications for the Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative at the Ford Foundation. She’s a frequent lecturer and keynote presenter nationally and internationally on the theory of living systems and urban sustainability. She is the editor of “Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the Next American Metropolis,” which has been called a remarkable and indispensable book for charting our way forward.