front cover of Arrested Mobility
Arrested Mobility
Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement
Charles T. Brown
Island Press, 2025

In the US, police conduct millions of traffic stops for reasons unrelated to safety. Study after study confirm that Black drivers experience higher rates of non-safety stops, searches, and use of force than White drivers.  

In Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement, Charles T. Brown, founder and CEO of Equitable Cities, examines why mobility is not afforded in the same way to everyone. He argues that the legacy of structural racism and White supremacy has led to disinvestment and over-policing in Black communities and communities of color, thwarting opportunity, as physical mobility and social mobility are intrinsically linked.  This experience for Black people around the world is what Brown refers to as arrested mobility.  

Mobility embodies freedom and allows people, places, and cities to thrive. In the US, freedom—synonymous with national identity—is so often represented by acts of movement such as walking, cycling, driving a car or traveling to a different city. However, for Black Americans, exercising freedom of mobility continues to mean confronting the harsh reality of White fear, fragility, and violence.  

Understanding the causes of arrested mobility, will help us to develop solutions to increase mobility for Black people and other marginalized groups, Brown explains. The conditions society has created have their roots in what Brown calls “The Four Ps”: Polity, Policy, Planning, and Policing. He examines the four P’s, drawing from research, his own experience and the experience of other Black Americans. Brown then suggests solutions, some of which are already being implemented in the US.  

In Arrested Mobility, Brown shows how un-arresting mobility creates an opportunity not just for a better society for Black people, but for all people. Arrested mobility is detrimental to our society as a whole, not just the people it directly harms. By not providing equitable access to jobs, community resources, and public spaces, we are limiting the potential of a large percentage of our population to participate and contribute to society. Change is possible. We can un-arrest mobility together. Charles T. Brown shows us how. 

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front cover of Right of Way
Right of Way
Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
Angie Schmitt, foreword by Charles T. Brown
Island Press, 2020
The face of the pedestrian safety crisis looks a lot like Ignacio Duarte-Rodriguez. The 77-year old grandfather was struck in a hit-and-run crash while trying to cross a high-speed, six-lane road without crosswalks near his son’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was one of the more than 6,000 people killed while walking in America in 2018. In the last ten years, there has been a 50 percent increase in pedestrian deaths.

The tragedy of traffic violence has barely registered with the media and wider culture. Disproportionately the victims are like Duarte-Rodriguez—immigrants, the poor, and people of color. They have largely been blamed and forgotten.

In Right of Way, journalist Angie Schmitt shows us that deaths like Duarte-Rodriguez’s are not unavoidable “accidents.” They don’t happen because of jaywalking or distracted walking. They are predictable, occurring in stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public-health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve. 

Schmitt examines the possible causes of the increase in pedestrian deaths as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Her investigation unveils why pedestrians are dying—and she demands action.  Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety. Ultimately, Schmitt argues that we need improvements in infrastructure and changes to policy to save lives.

Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.
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