Capital Improvements Equity Analysis
Introduction
What are capital improvements?
Capital improvements is a broad term for the vast array of built infrastructure planned, built, and maintained by the city of Los Angeles. It covers everything from parks to sidewalks, bike lanes to sewer lines, and includes both visible and invisible assets. These projects touch upon nearly every aspect of the daily lived experience of Angelenos. As such, the provision and upkeep of these assets is vital to promoting quality of life.
Who manages these projects?
Overseeing this infrastructure is a monumental undertaking, one shared by many city departments. Each department manages a smaller slice of the load in slightly varied ways, wrestling with the constraints imposed on them. Budgets and finances must be accounted for, projects must be prioritized based on need, and construction crews have to be brought in and directed. While individual departments are given the authority over some aspects, they must also coordinate with other city departments, the Mayor’s Office, City Council, and community stakeholders.
What does equity look like?
Recently issued Executive Directive 27 requires departments to identify equity indicators and develop reliable data to track progress on racial equity. Not all capital improvements are conducted in an equitable fashion. Los Angeles continues to wrestle with deeply entrenched spatial inequity, with racial and economic segregation persisting across highly visible lines. The city Controller’s Office recently produced a comprehensive overview highlighting areas of historic and continued inequity.
Simply put, equity entails directing resources to areas of greatest need. When it comes to equity in capital investment, that means prioritizing the allocation of projects to areas that have historically been underserved. Working towards equity requires the recognition of inequity and the inclusion of such considerations when allocating resources. When equity is meaningfully promoted, all Angelenos benefit.
What does the data say right now?
Because capital improvements are broad and overwhelming in scope, and because projects are compartmentalized within departments, there is no easy way to quickly summarize the current state of equity in capital investment. The Data Team within the Mayor’s Office of Budget and Innovation is currently undertaking a comprehensive analysis of equity in capital investment, seeking to centralize data from city departments and summarize findings in a meaningful and accessible way.
As of right now, analysis is being conducted on a departmental basis. Below are some preliminary findings from consultation with departmental experts. Each section corresponds to a specific department and its role in capital investment. Included is information on the types of projects handled by each department, as well as the factors that go into resource allocation. The end goal is to provide a framework for studying and mapping inequity, encouraging further studies to build upon the work here and illuminating vital information to a wider audience.
Preliminary Data Analysis
Redlining and Historically Disadvantaged Communities
Much of the inequity embedded in Los Angeles's geography today is attributable to explicit historical discrimination. During the housing boom of the post-WWII era, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) excluded racial and ethnic minorities from policies aimed at promoting homeownership. Through a system of explicitly racist neighborhood grading, racially mixed neighborhoods were coded as too risky for insured mortgages. Predominantly white neighborhoods received generous support from the federal government in securing mortgages and property.
While redlining is no longer in practice, the consequences pervade. Homeownership remains the primary vehicle of wealth transfer in the United States. When homeownership is systematically denied to some groups, but not others, socio-economic inequality becomes strongly embedded in the geography of a city.
This map indicates which of Los Angeles's neighborhoods were coded as being too risky for investment. As one might expect, East LA is heavily redlined, indicating a higher proportion of non-white residents. West LA has few if any "risky" neighborhoods, meaning federally-backed mortgages were given out freely, as long as buyers met key criteria.
This troubled history is why equity matters. Government-sanctioned discrimination must be addressed with government action, which is why the City of Los Angeles seeks to center equity in capital investment.
Median Household Income by Council District
This map shows median household income by council district, where it is clear that council districts on the West Side are the highest income. On the other hand, East and South LA are lower income.
Predominant Race by Census Tract
This map shows the predominant race by census tract with the boundaries of council districts for reference. The West Side is predominantly White, East and South LA are predominantly Hispanic, and parts of South LA are predominantly Black.
Bureau of Engineering (BOE)
Manages municipal buildings, recreational spaces, bridges and streets, storm and wastewater projects. Many, but not all, of these projects, are also managed by other departments.
The map indicates the sum of all dollars invested in BOE projects over the past 20 years per city council district. Darker areas indicate greater investment.
Clearly, districts around Downtown and East LA have received greater investment according to this dataset. These are historically disadvantaged areas that tend to have older infrastructure. The patterns of investment in this map reflect this reality, as more resources have been allocated to repair older street, sidewalk, and wastewater infrastructure.
Because resources are allocated strictly based on asset age and condition, equity is not a relevant factor in determining the distribution of projects. Thus, while this data is important, it may present a misleading story about equity in capital investment. To better understand the degree of (in)equity, planning and budgeting constraints needs to be closely examined.
Sewer and Wastewater Projects
Highlighted here are the line projects from the BOE dataset. The high concentration of such projects in East and South LA largely explains the patterns of distribution in the previous map.
This reinforces how important it is to go beyond dollars per district. Mapping expenditures can help reveal patterns for analysis, but further digging is necessary.
LA Sanitation (LASAN)
Manages storm and wastewater projects, providing clean drinking water, and properly disposing of waste. Also sustainably manages watersheds though the implementation of green infrastructure.
Odor Complaints
The map indicates the distribution of odor complaints per council district. Darker areas receive more odor complaints. As expected, the newer infrastructure in the San Fernando Valley produces fewer odor complaints compared to the older infrastructure of the rest of the city.
Swipe right to view the distribution of wastewater improvement projects. Brighter areas indicate a greater concentration of such projects.
Because LASAN has greater discretion when it comes to these projects, they are able to take equity into consideration when planning and implementing them. So in response to high numbers of odor complaints in certain areas, they are able to mobilize resources and address the issue.
While odor incidents can be unpleasant, LASAN is proud of the fact that its prevention and response statistics are among the best of any large American city.
StreetsLA (Bureau of Street Services)
Manages sidewalks, curbs, pavement, street trees, street furniture, and street sweeping.
Left side shows Pavement Preservation Program (PPP) projects from 2013-2019. Right side shows Street centerlines. Both display summarized length in miles by council district.
Both maps show the greatest length in miles are on the West Side and in the Valley, while the fewest miles are in South, Central, and East LA. It is not surprising that pavement resurfacing projects are related to the amount of streets in general. However, it is notable that streets are distributed unevenly across the city's geography and prompts further analysis.
Commuter Information (Tract)
Left side shows the percent who commute use public transportation | Right side shows percent who commute by driving alone.
There is a clear pattern where a greater percent of commuters in South, Central, and East LA use public transportation and a greater percent of commuters on in the Valley and on the West side commute by driving alone.
Here is one example of demographic information that might be analyzed in relation to equity in street investment equity, other demographic analyses are welcome.
Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA)
Manages cultural centers, theaters, historic sites, and funding for arts organizations.
DCA promotes investment into the arts to recognize the city's rich cultural history, strengthen accessibility to art programs, and foster relationships between artists and cultural organizations.
A lack of resources greatly complicates DCA's mission to promote a vibrant cultural environment for the city.
Public Works Improvements Arts Program (PWIAP)
This city mandate requires that 1% of the total construction costs of City projects be set aside for public art projects.
Community Arts Facilities and Theaters
Capital Improvement Data
Analyze Capital Improvement Data
The data below were used to produce the maps available above. You may use this data to conduct an analysis of your own.
Takeaways
- Capital improvement projects cover an incredibly extensive scope of projects, making it a challenge to use data to understand their equity implications. Adequate analysis of capital investment projects requires the synthesis of many data sources broken up across departments.
- It is important to contextualize any data analysis with background information provided by departments. A given dataset may be visualized to display a equity concern (or lack thereof), but such a map may take on a very different meaning when paired with information about project funding and administrative or political processes. For this reason, we recommend future analyses be paired with consultation with the relevant department(s).
- Finding CIP data was often difficult, and frequently the information necessary to clearly understand whether resources were distributed equitably was unavailable. In order to produce more in-depth equity analyses about where dollars are spent in the city, we recommend departments be allocated greater resources to making funding and project data open to the public.
- Unlike in other major municipalities, Los Angeles does not have a single system that tracks the condition of all city physical assets, and prioritizes those in need of replacement and repair. The implementation of such a system would increase government transparency and consistency, allowing the public to understand by what metrics assets are being improved, as well as remove active political pressures and bias from the investment process. However, an asset management system alone only improves existing infrastructure, which implicitly favors areas that have already been comparatively overinvested in due to structural racism and discrimination. An equitable framework for capital investment must provide consistent processes for CIP management based on asset condition, while also building in metrics to prioritize underinvested neighborhoods.
- Our visualizations are meant to serve as case studies/initial examples and we hope they encourage further exploration.