Highlights of Vision
The vision is for the future of systematic economic racial equity. The foundation of that vision would be an Equity Education R & D Innovation Park. This park would consist of multidisciplinary Research and Development neighborhoods with University, Corporate, Non-Profit, Government, and Community facilities intertwined, including a Social Innovation High School, affordable residential housing, executive centers and hotels, among other commercial and retail amenities.
What is a Racial Equity R &D Park?
A place with:
- A complementary mix of university faculty, students and research centers with industry, community, and government counterparts.
- A blend of large, small and entrepreneurial businesses and NPOs.
- Clusters of buildings in R&D neighborhoods with multi-disciplinary themes based on cutting-edge research and practically-driven social and equity innovations
- Intensive partnership formation among industry, government, community, philanthropic, and university residents in a pedestrian-scale community.
- Easy, pedestrian access to community courtyards, restaurants, parks, shops, museums, theaters, retail and entertainment outlets.
- Residential neighborhoods within walking distance of R&D neighborhoods.
- Recreational amenities including jogging and biking trails.
- A proposed transit corridor linking various parts of the park.
What is a Racial Equity Innovation Enterprise Zone?
- Clusters of activity will break down traditional, artificial barriers to create, integrate, and apply advancements in racial equity knowledge.
- University, industry, charitable, government, and community partners will interact in multi-disciplinary programs directed towards the solution of contemporary and future racial equity problems.
The Resulting synergy will lead to:
- Technological innovation and transfer
- Real-world teaching and learning
- Sound business and social investment aimed at creating systematic racial equity
The Equity Education Park will provide a new dimension of excellence for the 21st Century in the teaching, research, and performance of Racially Equitable Economic Development.
THE SITE WILL HOUSE THE FIRST TEACHING CITY AND SOCIAL INNOVATION DISTRICT IN THE WORLD.
The project will focus on systematic racial economic equity, and will be jointly anchored by a 20-acre equity education and research park, a 3.5-mile equity corridor, a global equity investment fund, and the first publicly supported HBCU in America.
The project will be jointly led and owned by youth and family members from the surrounding community and eventually spread across the United States and the World through a one of a kind model – Economic Equity by Design.
DGEP will bring together impact investors, community intermediaries, foundations, institutional partners, organizations and others will collaborate in a mixed-use environment against the backdrop of one of America’s leading historically black colleges.
The simple concept is that by bringing smart and passionate people together in a permanent and ongoing environment with the challenging and audacious task of ending systematic racism in health, education, and economic development, that innovation will happen in ways unprecedented from when they are separate.
The goal of this work is multifold, including training the current and future generations of public, private and philanthropic leaders in racially equitable economic development. However, the ultimate goal is to train youth and young people from low-income backgrounds on how to look at their surroundings and see hope instead of hopelessness, promise instead of peril, and opportunity instead of poverty. The goal is to show them how to transform their environment, and their lives, simultaneously.
A university-related Social Equity Innovation Research Park would serve as a dynamic engine of a Social Innovation Economy of the twenty-first century.
Such a park would include:
- A link to research universities
- Faculty members from various scientific and applied disciplines
- Faculty members who are conducting groundbreaking, innovative research that has practical commercial applications with both an economic and social return – whether through product, service, or practical organizational mechanism for social enterprise
- Centralized systems technology office that works closely with the park to integrate research
- An incubator facility that offers fledging social enterprise companies space and services
- Enough space to capture and house BIPOC businesses once they are ready for full scale operation or for established equity-interested businesses interested in social innovation to set up operations
- Access to racial equity interested venture capital money to fund the entire process
A Social Equity Innovation Research Park would create a real-world intellectual laboratory for adaptive leadership in the area of racial equity for individual and entities representing the public, private, not-for-profit, charitable, academic, non-governmental, and community sectors. This group would also include social entrepreneurs, technologies, artists, policy makers, and practitioners engaged in this area.
-DGEP TEAM