Manuel Pastor is professor of geography and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, where he also serves as director of the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at the Center for Sustainable Cities and co‐director of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). Founding director of the Center forJustice, Tolerance, and Community at UC Santa Cruz, Professor Pastor holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has received numerous fellowships and grants. In recent years, his research has focused on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low‐income urban communities in the U.S. He has also conducted research on Latin American economic conditions. His most recent book, coauthored with Chris Benner and Martha Matsuoka, is This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Reshaping Metropolitan America (CornellUniversity Press, 2009). He previously co‐authored Staircases or Treadmills: Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy, Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America, and Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together. He is a member of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee for the California Air Resources Board and the Building Resilient Regions research networksponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.