Equity and Sustainable Development

In part three of the book, Equity and Sustainable Development: Reflections from the U.S.- Mexico Border, poverty, vulnerability, and environmental management are discussed. Chapters use Tijuana to show how vulnerability and poor environmental management is widespread within poverty stricken cities. Connections between these factors show how one leads to another, making for sustainability problems in cities like Tijuana.

Chapter six investigates the influence of urban structure on income redistribution through the spatial organization of jobs and services. Tito Alegría tests his initial conclusions that the price of access to jobs and resources is higher for the poor, and that the sitting of urban resources is an important factor in the regressive redistribution of income. To begin, Alegría discusses the mechanism that determines where shops and services are established and where manufacturing firms locate. Firms and businesses follow the consumers by offering their goods and services in densely concentrated zones near the residential areas of high-income groups. In order to access the same good or service, the poor must travel longer distances. In addition, there is an emergence of spatial monopolies or oligopies that facilitate the distribution of lower-quality goods and services at higher prices. For this reason, prices for goods and services are higher in areas that house lower-income groups. Alegría also talks about the two forms of segregation. Segregation by location entails social and spatial exclusion in relation to the advantages of urban life. Segregation by differentiation is the spatial exclusion between social groups. In the end, Alegría concludes that the redistribution of income is regressive due to the way in wh...

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...ey less practices they implemented.

As the book progresses, it becomes clear how sustainable development in not a single problem, but instead multiple problems that all feed off of one another. No politician, president, or leader will be able to implement one solution that will fix everything. Instead, world leaders need to come together to create multiple solutions for the large array of problems that are all contributing to the lack of sustainable development. Achieving an environment that preserves and restores natural resources while also ensuring acceptable standards of living for the local population and fair distributions of benefits is extremely difficult. Though this book is bringing the difficulties of achieving this sustainable development to reality, it is also enlightening in the fact that it provides the information needed to make a positive change.