Using Built Environment and Strategies and Advocacy to Relieve Communities from Arrested MobilityIn this conversation with Dr Gabriel Kaplan, Charles Brown explores his thesis that the black community is restricted by a three forces - coercive policing strategies, self deputized citizens who enforce racial boundaries, and expressed policies by state and local governments that curb access to mass transit. These three forces act to limit the access of black Americans to spaces where they can engage in physical activity, restrict their access to forms of active transportation such as walking, running and biking, and limit access to economic opportunities that can lie across broad distances in metro areas. As a result the physical health of the community is impaired and access to upward economic mobility is constrained.

Charles Brown, MPASenior Research Specialist with the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) at Rutgers University