COVID-19 WORKING GROUP ON COMMERCIAL ANCHORS OF MAJORITY-MINORITY COMMUNITIES

The COVID-19 Working Group on Commercial Anchors of Majority-Minority Communities assesses how cascading risks of public health crises affect businesses vital to the wellbeing of Black, Latinx, Asian, MENA and Native Americans. Predominantly minority-owned, staffed and patroned, small businesses operating in places populated largely by racial minorities disproportionately provide essential goods, services and employment. Our policy-oriented, place-based research of these assets evaluates--online and in-person--long-term community resilience and vulnerability not just short-term business recovery and distress.

WG members are community-engaged researchers working in urban and rural contexts for public and private universities. Designing and conducting research in partnership with each other as well as our local communities, the Working Group of planners, policymakers, economists and sociologists—most of whom identify as gender or racial minorities underrepresented in their fields and organizations—aims to inform the meaning and measure of majority-minority communities closed and ‘open for business’ due to this and future coronaviruses.

NOTE: This COVID-19 Working Group is supported in part by the CONVERGE and Social Science Extreme Events Network, NSF-funded projects of the Natural Hazards Center at University of Colorado Boulder. A brief introduction to the Center’s projects and the related research of COVID-19 Working Groups is provided in the video below.