Throughout his career as a religious and civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized a concept he called the "beloved community."
At crucial points such as the Montgomery bus boycott and the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King wrote that the ultimate aim was "to foster and create the 'beloved community' in America."
King used the term to describe an ideal community beyond both racial segregation and economic inequality, a place where everyone had access to the physical and spiritual necessities of life.
A group based in King's home city, Atlanta, has launched an ambitious community planning initiative on the holiday weekend marking what would be King's 95th birthday. The Just Communities initiative aims for a comprehensive system for economic development and environmental sustainability inspired by King's goals.
"It's about a way of growth that finally gets us to what King called the 'beloved community,'" Partnership for Southern Equity founder Nathaniel Smith told Newsweek. PSE is an Atlanta-based nonprofit founded in 2008 to promote racial equity and shared prosperity.
Smith said it's important to avoid past mistakes in urban design and economic growth when development often happened to communities instead of happening with them.
"The way that we have grown, in my opinion, has been the antithesis of inclusion, the antithesis of resilience, the antithesis of sustainability," he said. "We cannot move forward as a community if we don't think of a new way to grow."
Placing highways and heavy industry near economically marginalized neighborhoods often added to racial segregation and higher levels of pollution for communities of color.
In developing its Just Communities initiative, PSE looked back at that legacy of environmental racism and ahead to the climate shocks that are likely to come. Heatwaves and extreme weather events made worse by a warmer climate often have disproportionate impacts on lower-income neighborhoods.
PSE acquired EcoDistricts, a nonprofit group based in Portland, Oregon, that worked on neighborhood-scale development emphasizing environmental sustainability. Together, they developed Just Communities around the key concepts of racial equity and climate resilience.
"These are the two existential issues of our time," EcoDistricts founder Rob Bennett told Newsweek.
Bennett described Just Communities as a framework for fostering equitable development with community input to draw on local knowledge and resources. The initiative also offers technical assistance and a certification program for community leaders.
He compared the Just Communities initiative to certification standards for green buildings, which have been wildly successful. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, has grown into a widely used rating system for green buildings including standards for energy efficiency and a healthy indoor environment. Millions of people around the world now work and live in LEED-certified buildings.
So, Bennett asked, why not apply similar standards and metrics to the processes used for sustainable community growth?
"We've got a new compass, we've got this new direction to take those principles and to put them into practice," Bennett said.
Climate resilience and racial equity could take many different forms depending on a community's needs and goals. Smith described one possible tool that could be adapted to turn climate vulnerabilities into potential points of strength, something he called a "resilience hub."
A resilience hub is a building in a neighborhood retrofitted to meet community needs in a crisis such as a heatwave or power outage.
"If electricity goes out in the community, they can go there for a charging station," Smith explained. But beyond just meeting emergency needs, he said, the hub could also become an economic opportunity.
"For example, there's an opportunity for workforce development through microgrid technology so that particular building can have solar," he said. "It's not just about helping these communities survive, it's about working to ensure that these communities can thrive."
The initiative's timing could be very good. The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act have both triggered massive public and private investments in a range of clean energy, efficiency and resilient infrastructure projects. And the Biden administration's Justice 40 initiative calls for at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to go to disadvantaged communities.
The Just Communities proponents want to seize this ripe moment when private investment and federal funding are flowing and steer that toward more sustainable and equitable growth.
Toward the end of his life, King wrote more about what it would take to bring about the "beloved community" he had in mind. It "will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives," he wrote.
Changing souls is the work of religion. But "quantitative changes in our lives" could include the work of city planners, developers, community organizers, business leaders and elected officials—the very people that Smith hopes will adopt the Just Communities principles.
"I think that is the connection between the work that we do and Dr. King's legacy," Smith said.
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