Equity in Action

One Map Transforming City Work in Tacoma

Welcome to Tacoma!

Situated along Washington State’s Puget Sound, and resting on the traditional lands of the Puyallup people, Tacoma is a bustling international port city with sweeping mountain, city and water views.

Map showing Tacoma in Washington State -- north of Olympia and south of Seattle.

A sunrise view of downtown Tacoma with Mount Rainier in the distance

Urbanites are drawn to downtown Tacoma for its competitively priced residential spaces while families gravitate toward Tacoma's charming neighborhoods with big city amenities.

Aerial view of a residential neighborhood in Tacoma with mountains in the far distance

Like many American cities, Tacoma struggles with a long history of racial discrimination and inequitable policies and investments. For Tacoma, this includes the forced expulsion of Chinese residents in 1885, incarceration of Japanese residents during WWII, and forced segregation of communities of color due to redlining practices from the 1930s through 1960s.

Mural from the Hilltop neighborhood in Tacoma depicting people of different backgrounds

Redlining maps justified unequal treatment of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and immigrant communities: restricting where they were allowed to live, what schools they could attend, and what services their neighborhoods would receive.

This 1929 map shows an excerpt from an area that has been downgraded solely based on the race of three resident families.

These discriminatory practices, maps and policies have lasting impacts to this day; they have shaped the demographic and economic patterns in communities. Redlining is a large factor behind gaps in wealth and funding for resources including education and healthcare.

To learn more about redlining, watch Tacoma Public Library's video on Redlining in Tacoma or visit the University of Richmond's Mapping Inequality interactive map of Tacoma.

The Equity Index

Acknowledging this history of inequitable practices, the City of Tacoma's Office of Human Rights worked with the Kirwan Institute out of Ohio State University to develop an opportunity index with three general goals:

The resulting index scores Tacoma's 153 Census block groups by 32 different indicators placed in 5 categories: Livability, Accessibility, Economy, Education, and Environmental Health. The resulting Equity Index visually highlights disparities in Tacoma residents' access to opportunity.

Graphic displaying different datasets, categories (Access, Livability, Education, Economy, and Environmental Health), and resulting map of the Equity Index with a legend ranging from Very High opportunity areas (darkest shading), High, Moderate, Low, and Very Low opportunity (lightest shading).

Colors in the map have been intentionally reversed to counter historical representations of low income or communities of color as bad or negative. The "flipped" gradient also does not use green or "positive" colors when referring to high investment (white) communities.

Instead, darker colors in the Index represent areas with more opportunity.

Map of Tacoma highlighting areas of the city with Very High and High opportunity according to the Equity Index. In this map, these areas are mostly in northern parts of the Tacoma.

Meanwhile, lighter colors call out the need for more investment and opportunity.

Map of Tacoma highlighting areas of the city with Very Low and Low opportunity according to the Equity Index. In this map, these areas are mostly in southern parts of the Tacoma.

Swipe to see how the Equity Index compares to historically redlined areas of Tacoma.

The development and ongoing improvements to the Equity Index have taken time and regional collaboration. An arguably larger challenge, however, has been learning to utilize the Equity Index as a tool in the City's transformative journey.

Applications

Below are three examples of how the City of Tacoma applies the Equity Index for more equitable outreach and decision-making.

1. Equitable Distribution of Grants

The City's Community and Economic Development Department uses the Equity Index as one of several tools to make access to microloans and grants more equitable for microenterprises, minority-owned companies and women-owned companies.

In 2019, the department established a microloan program which provides gap and bridge loans of $25,000 or less in response to the inaccessibility of gap funding for these groups. Within two years, use of the Equity Index as a loan underwriting metric became standard practice for the department.

Aerial view of Tacoma with a clocktower in the foreground, other downtown buildings, the 11th Street Bridge, Thea Foss Waterway, and Mount Rainier in the distance.

This tool also informed the department's work on a Resiliency Grant in 2021 and a Recovery Grant in 2022. People who were in areas of low and very low economic opportunity were able to access the funds they needed more easily.

With this focus on equity, there was a 333% increase in dollars awarded to Black-owned businesses in 2021. More than $3.385 million in grants up to $15,000 were awarded, 56% of which went to BIPOC-owned businesses.

A group of community members gathered around a table in a room filled with plants and artwork at Parable, a black-owned business in Tacoma.

"Our business would not have thrived without this critical grant. It allowed us to expand our inventory which goes to local authors, makers, artists, and so on. It also allowed us to host more events for the community and collaborate with folks and community organizations for free, where money would limit them otherwise."

— Owners of Parable, a local Black-owned business, recipients of Recovery Grant

Three Black women with masks on, posing together in a shop filled with displays of clothing, shelves of books, and plants.

2. Equitable Delivery of Lifesaving Trainings

Your odds of surviving cardiac arrest greatly increases if you are able to receive lifesaving CPR quickly. Unfortunately, national data tells us that Black and Hispanic people are less likely than white people to receive potentially lifesaving CPR at home and in public locations.

The Tacoma Fire Department used the Equity Index to see if there are correlations between survival outcomes and location of cardiac arrest incidents.

The Tacoma Fire Department overlaid cardiac arrest data with Equity Index data,

and learned that CPR from a bystander is less likely in low or very low opportunity areas.

Now, the department uses the Equity Index to select locations for future CPR trainings. They set the goal to have CPR classes delivered in areas of Tacoma that have historically low bystander CPR rates and are using community insights gleaned from Equity Index data to inform this work and further refine their approach.

3. Equitable Infrastructure Investments

The Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) Advanced Meter Infrastructure project will upgrade almost 290,000 water and power meters.

Modern digital technology brings many customer benefits over time including: additional options to manage monthly budgets and billing, remote electric service reconnection, more options to control costs, improved reliability through faster outage and leak detection, and more flexible payment options.

TPU staff utilized the Equity Index to help identify low historical infrastructure investment areas within its service area and prioritize those areas for improvements first.

Since the project began, TPU has been able to see the impacts of these infrastructure investments within low equity areas.

As of January 2023, nearly all of the low equity areas in TPU's service area have been upgraded.

A Better Tacoma

In addition to the examples described above, the City of Tacoma is actively integrating the Equity Index as a tool in other daily operations and programs including:

City Council decisions
City budget proposals
Department Racial Equity Action Plans

The chart below illustrates other project applications within the City.

This starburst diagram says "Equity Index" at the center surrounded by a ring of categories: Decision Making, Policy, Outreach, Program Development, and Asset Management. A final ring on the outside of the diagram shows examples applications of the Equity Index from each category.

While this one map has become an essential tool in the City's journey towards more equitable governance, it is not the beginning or end of change. Rather, it is part of a larger timeline of ongoing efforts to realize a shared vision for Tacoma's future.

This timeline begins in 2014 with the community coming together to develop Vision 2025. It describes actions taken by the City in 2015, 2018, 2020, 2022, and ends in 2023 with Pierce County and other regional agencies collaborating on an expanded version of Tacoma's Equity Index.

Tacoma, the City of Destiny, is known for its determination and resilience. The city enjoys a world-class quality of life, a diversity of people and neighborhoods, cultural amenities, and an abundance of natural beauty.

Like other growing cities, however, Tacoma has its fair share of challenges and the City of Tacoma and its partners remain fully engaged in solving Tacoma’s challenges with equity and compassion. Together, we are committed to realizing our shared vision for Tacoma’s success today and for future generations to come.