The term economic development generally refers to work aimed at increasing or diversifying the range of income and wealth generating opportunities in a given place. The focus can be directly on attracting new businesses or workforce development or, making a “business case” for improving housing, recreation and access to health care by noting the relationship of those opportunities to workforce development and the ability of a community to attract new businesses. It is interesting to note that the way groups tend to make this kind of “business case” to promote efforts to improve the lives of marginalized individuals is one of the times we most clearly describe structural racism.

john powell, the director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and others have flipped this insight to create “opportunity maps” showing the overlap of demographics, access to health, employment, public transit and many other factors in a given place, as one way of helping people working on economic development to do so from a lens that promotes explicit [...]