This year s Equity Summit 11 is organized around the notion that racial and economic equity is the best growth model for the increasingly diverse, and increasingly unequal, U.S. I joined a panel on the topic today with HUD Secretary Shawn Donovan, the Harlem Children Zone s Geoffrey Canada, Antonio Gonzalez of the William C. Velasquez Institute and Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California. Pastor shared research showing that both countries as well as American metropolitan areas with the least inequality and gaps between rich and poor are growing faster than those with the starkest gaps.