June 8, 2010 – Hour 1

The Brookings Institution’s State of Metropolitan America Report exposed a surprising economic trend.  Poverty in the suburbs, areas traditionally thought of as wealthy, grew at a rate of 25 percent between 1999 and 2008.  That’s almost five times faster than the increase in poverty in cities.  The suburbs are now home to almost of a third of the people living in poverty in America.  With today’s panel we look at what that means for urban policy, attempts to end poverty, and the communities living in cities and suburbs in America.

We’re joined by:

Elizabeth Kneebone, Senior Research Analyst at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institute, and author of The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008

Reverend Alan Traher, Pastor of the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer in Glen Burnie, and the co-chair of BRIDGE, a congregation-based organization that works for social change.  

Dr. Bernadette Hanlon, Research Analyst and NSF IGERT Program Coordinator at the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education at UMBC, and author of Once the American Dream: Inner-ring Suburbs in the Metropolitan United States, and Cities and Suburbs: New Metropolitan Realities in the US.  

Carl Anthony, a former Program Officer for the Ford Foundation, where he directed the Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative. He’s also founder of Breakthrough Communities, co-founder of the Urban Habitat Program, and a former President of the Earth Island Institute.