The Power Of Purpose: How Jonathan Rose Is Creating 'Communities Of Opportunity'
Afdhel Aziz, Forbes, April 30, 2019. Full article available here.
Jonathan Rose is on a mission is to develop "communities that enhance opportunity for all." As the Founder and President of Jonathan Rose Companies, his firm’s work has touched many aspects of community health; working with cities and not-for-profits to build affordable and mixed-income housing, cultural, health and educational infrastructure, and advocates for neighborhoods to be enriched with parks and open space, mass transit, jobs, and healthy food. He is also the author of The Well Tempered City, a treatise on how cities have a crucial role in addressing the most important issues of our time. I caught up with him to find out more about his ideas around how cities can be re-designed to tackle social and environmental problems in ways that help humanity thrive.
I started by asking him about how he defined the purpose of Jonathan Rose companies. "Our mission is to develop 'Communities of Opportunity,' in which every resident and employee has equal access to opportunity, environmental quality, health, and well-being. The United States of America was founded to be a Land of Opportunity; the poor distribution of opportunity, environmental quality, and health by zip code is a fundamental misallocation of justice. If we are to create a fair and just society, then it is our moral imperative to overcome this. Communities of Opportunity begin with safe, green, stable affordable housing. Our goal is to buy or build affordable and mixed-income housing and to expand the platform of opportunity by providing or connecting each to the transportation, health, education, social, cultural and other elements to our residents, so that they and our staff can become empowered partners with us and their cities in the transformation of their own neighborhoods. This will not equalize outcomes, but we hope that it will equalize our residents’ pathways," said Rose.