Giving Compass' Take:

• Libby Schaaf, mayor of Oakland, proposes plans to make her city more equitable and inclusive by addressing access to quality education and justice reform. 

• Libby Schaaf's ideas stem from mistakes that Oakland has made in the past.  How can other city leaders look into the past to create a better future? Do your local politicians use an equity lens when trying to solve city-wide problems and focus on inclusivity for low-income neighborhoods?

• Municipal innovation may also help shape a better future for cities through local government action. 

During a session of Civic I/O, the mayors’ summit at South by Southwest, the mayors of 19 cities around the U.S. gathered to both imagine and plan for their cities’ future challenges.

Jake Dunagan, research director at the Institute of the Future, instructed the mayors in thinking like futurists. But for Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, though, the future is happening right now. Schaaf is a lifelong Oaklander, and she’s witnessed the city’s rapid transition in the past five years from underinvested to being near the center of tech-industry-driven gentrification and growth.

She is determined to maintain affordability across all income levels represented in Oakland and is pushing for both new development and nonprofit partnerships to expand protections for existing low-income renters. But a truly equitable city, Schaaf says, is not possible without equal opportunity for all, regardless of race or economic situation. For Schaaf, that starts with access to education–and with reforming a justice system that has long worked to perpetuate economic and racial inequity in the city.

Schaaf also imagines a future Oakland where division like race and socioeconomic status will no longer bear at all on one’s opportunities. “My dream for a future Oakland is that every child, no matter their race, their country of origin, economic status, or whatever their identity or characteristic are upon birth–that should not inhibit them at all from being successful,” she says.

Around 82% of white, affluent kids in Oakland test ready for kindergarten, just around 29% of Latino, and 26% African American kids do. “That is outrageous,” Schaaf says. Earlier in March, Schaaf filed a ballot initiative that would create a parcel tax to expand quality preschool access in underserved neighborhoods in the city.

“Diversity is a fact; inclusion is a choice,” she says.

Read the full article about preparing for more equitable future cities by Eillie Anzilotti at Fast Company.