The Fayetteville Equity Profile

Creation of the Fayetteville Equity Profile:
A little bit of backstory first…

In early 2018, Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) selected the City of Fayetteville, Arkansas, as one of six cities (out of 30+ applicants cities) around the United States to host an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion fellow to conduct and create various projects including this community equity profile. The USDN is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect local government practitioners in order to accelerate urban sustainability in U.S. and Canadian communities by developing, adopting, and sharing equitable practices.

USDN selected the City of Fayetteville and its Sustainability Department due to its ongoing commitment to community engagement and innovative public service practices. As the city rapidly grows along with the rest of Northwest Arkansas, the two organizations notice the opportunity to implement sustainability and equity into more long-range planning processes as the city undergoes updates to its master plans during 2018 and beyond. The Fayetteville Equity Profile is a 133-page, comprehensive data analysis of demographic, economic, educational, health, transportation, and housing equity indicators with measurable goals to improve equitable actions for the City of Fayetteville’s future.

The Profile was developed by Sean Michael Volavong, Stanford student and Arkansas native who came to the City to help with the project through a special fellowship program. We’ll let him tell you about his experience…

A Word From Our Fellow: Sean Michael Volavong

Hello everyone! My name is Sean Michael Volavong and between June and August 2018, I have collaborated with the City of Fayetteville’s Sustainability and Resilience Department as an Equity and Sustainability Planning Fellow. I was selected for this position as part of a greater cohort of summer equity, diversity, and inclusion fellows across the country in the following cities: Fayetteville, Arkansas; Austin and San Antonio, Texas; Eugene, Oregon; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Baltimore, Maryland, facilitated by the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN). Through this position, fellows participate in a summer-long partnership with city departments working on a variety of projects focused on topics such as equity, diversity, and social and environmental sustainability.

In summary, over the span of twelve weeks, I developed a Community Equity Profile for the City of Fayetteville, Arkansas, which investigates different demographic, economic, educational, health, transportation, and housing data that influences the city.

[Editor’s note: you can view the entire Community Equity Profile for the City here.]

About Me

Before describing my project this summer, for those wanting a more holistic sense of myself, I am a first-generation, lower-income Asian-American who was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and grew up in Van Buren, Arkansas. With my father immigrating from Laos and my mother being adopted from Vietnam during the Vietnam War period (both relocating to Fort Smith), my upbringing has been a mixture of southern hospitality, discovering the wonders of the Ozarks, and exploring my own racial and ethnic identity in a fairly homogeneous yet very welcoming and warm community.

Moving forward, during my junior year at Van Buren High School, I was awarded a scholarship to attend Stanford University in California through Questbridge, a nonprofit organization that connects high-achieving, lower-opportunity high school students with colleges they and their families might not envision being able to afford without financial support. Although for some, the largest culture shock in moving from Arkansas to California might be the endless sunshine, an expanded focus on technology, or differences in ethnic communities, the largest culture shock I witnessed as I have been living and studying in the San Francisco Bay Area is the sheer gravity of socioeconomic tensions and dilemmas the area has faced, is currently facing, and will face in the future. Whether it is a transportation issue (the Bay Area has over 27 different transportation agencies) or a housing affordability issue (the average one-bedroom rental in San Francisco in 2017 was roughly $3,300 [per month!]), my courses and community internships have allowed me to engage with populations facing inequities, hear their diverse stories, and expand my perspective on urban planning. As of now, I am majoring in Urban Studies, a field for which I have grown a passion as it is critical to understanding how to mitigate growth and decline through multiple perspectives.

During this same period, my sister and brother-in-law moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Although most of my time in the past few years has been invested in Northern California, traveling back to Northwest Arkansas to visit my family every year has allowed me to witness the dramatic infrastructural and demographic changes occurring in Arkansas. Whether it’s the expansion of downtown Bentonville, uptown Fayetteville, the Razorback Regional Greenway, or the growing community amenities, I have been amazed at Northwest Arkansas’ growth and expected growth in the future.

However, are there challenges expected from this growth in Northwest Arkansas? Using the Bay Area as an example, I have seen how socioeconomic challenges can arise from high growth especially in areas such as East Palo Alto and South San Jose. During my third year of college, I was eager to spend a summer back in Arkansas, not only to reconnect with family, but to also contribute my academic experience back in my home community rather than elsewhere. After weeks of researching pathways to return to the area, I was told about the USDN equity, diversity, and inclusion fellow opportunity in Fayetteville through the Urban Studies program at Stanford.

The Equity Project

Fast forward an acceptance and flight to XNA, I began the first weeks of my fellowship under the guidance of a steering committee including Peter Nierengarten, Director of Sustainability and Resilience at the City of Fayetteville, along with Tenisha Gist and Erin Killeen of the Yvonne Richardson Community Center and The Sustainability Consortium respectively. Having representation from both the City of Fayetteville, its local community-development leaders, and its sustainability specialists was essential to developing an equitable lens for my project.

The main objective for this project was to provide the foundations for conversations regarding equity and diversity in Fayetteville, which has historically had limited data that has been analyzed for such purposes. Throughout the span of my time in Fayetteville, I was able to analyze hundreds of rows of data, interview over 30 individuals to inform my assumptions, and foster strong relationships with related stakeholders.

Equity vs. Equality

For those who might not know what equity is, I can give you one analogy comparing equity to equality. The first: Imagine you and your closest three friends are given three pairs of identical size-10 shoes to wear before a thunderstorm will approach. For some of you, the shoes might be too small, or they might be too large. For some of you, the shoes might fit perfectly. When all of you step outside during the thunderstorm, some of you might get water in your shoes and some of you might not get water in your shoes. This is an equality lens. On the converse, imagine that you were all given shoes, but each pair was tailored to your specific size. None of you will get water in your shoes during the rainstorm following this decision, which is what an equity lens entails.

Interaction Institute for Social Change | Artist: Angus Maguire.

Although in an ideal scenario I would be able to spend much more time in the area researching and conducting different research projects with more focus such as investigating and targeting specific inequities in areas such as accessibility or gender or sexual orientation in Fayetteville, I am glad that the baseline data that I compiled is able to contribute to existing city initiatives such as the City Plan 2040 and the upcoming Workforce Development Plan.

Throughout my summer, I have grown both as a community researcher and developer, but I have also grown my love for Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas. Through living in the city and witnessing the changes happening throughout its streets first-hand rather than through a distant lens in California, I can sympathize why this area is a hidden gem in the landscape of America. I am excited to see what this area can grow and become within the upcoming years, and I am even more excited to see what collaborative initiatives the city can develop as it begins and continues to prepare for the immense growth that is unparalleled in most places in America.

fyvgov

The official blog for the City of Fayetteville, Arkansas

City of Fayetteville AR

Written by

The official Medium channel of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

fyvgov

fyvgov

The official blog for the City of Fayetteville, Arkansas

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade