Re-Placing Geographies of (Health) Opportunity
Excerpt
“Unfortunately, “place” itself seems to have gotten lost in conversations about opportunity—which is rather remarkable considering that much of what we see and hear regarding opportunity concerns its geography. Of course, place is much more than geographic space. And appreciating the true geography of opportunity requires more specificity and conceptual nuance than has been afforded by the cartographic caricatures of place produced to date. In short, we need to know which and whose geography? And what, and whose, opportunity?
To answer these questions, we must rethink our definition and measure of “place” and how it is experienced, encountered, and accessed. We must also work harder to identify and locate—both socially and spatially—the policies and practices that continue to sort people into disparate places (i.e., literal placemaking mechanisms), and present those policies and practices clearly in our measures and maps of opportunity. Without advances in these two areas, we will not be able to distinguish the contexts and consequences of (in)opportunity from the causes of opportunity.”