Tacoma 2025 represents our community’s vision for Tacoma’s future. With defined indicators and other ways to measure progress, it is a plan that guides where the City of Tacoma – as both a local government organization and a community – is going over the next 10 years. The Equity Index is part of our strategy to connect the City’s strategic goals, council priorities, department initiatives, and other assessments to implement the community’s vision.
The equity index is an interactive mapping tool which visually highlights areas of Tacoma where residents have the most access to opportunity and areas where residents are further away from opportunity. We map opportunity using data that fits into five categories which the community identified as being important in the 2015-2025 strategic plan. The City of Tacoma uses the Equity Index to prioritize investments based on where and who has access to opportunity, for example opportunity to safely walk to school, opportunity to earn a living wage job, opportunity to access healthy food, etc. A resident who has access to many transit routes has higher opportunity and accessibility than a resident who has access to limited routes and no sidewalks. There are 29 indicators which are distributed into five categories: livability, accessibility, economy, education, and environmental health. The equity overview option shows how access to opportunity is distributed across Tacoma.
What are we doing with the Equity Index?
The Equity Index helps departments to make decisions about deploying resources in the community. One comprehensive example is our Environmental Service’s Urban Forestry Team and the work they are doing to improve tree canopy coverage and reduce urban heat island impacts in the community. They utilized the equity index, redlining maps, and the work they focus on to tell a story of how we should be addressing urban heat islands.
If you have questions or want to learn more, you can reach out to the Strategic Initiatives Coordinator Chelsea Talbert at ctalbert@cityoftacoma.org