San Diego Connect, a leading edge entrepreneur support organization, has released a new "index of regional innovation". The index measures how many startups have launched in the previous quarter. The index also looks at fluctuations in key technology clusters.

You can learn more about the index here. You can view a presentation on the index here.

Both Detroit and Toledo are focused on improving the opportunities for artists as a leading edge to urban regeneration.

The Executive Director of the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, outlines the role that artists can play in urban revitalization:

"People explore cities through the arts and what others are doing creatively. Then they start to look around and think, hey, I could live here." Learn more about what's happening in Detroit here.

In Toledo, the mayor is promoting a downtown arts district. As he noted when he introduced his plan, "Art is not only about improving the ambience of the city... he is also about economic development." Learn what Toledo is doing here.

Competitive Communities understand the importance of living in walkable neighborhoods. Walkable is one of the characteristics of “smart growth”, “traditional neighborhood design”, “new urbanism”, “transit oriented development” and other similar concepts used to describe more sustainable growth. If you are curious about how walkable your neighborhood is check out
Walk Score , a rating system for walkability. Type in your address if you live in the U.S., Canada or the U.K. and a map will appear showing you what is nearby and a score from 0 to 100. Anything less than 50 is not considered walkable. This site is the inspiration of Sightline Institute , a think tank based in Seattle with a mission to bring about sustainability.

If you need convincing that walkable communities are important for a better future read the following excerpts from the Walk Score web site:

“Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities:

Better health: A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood. Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15 - 45.
Reduction in greenhouse gas: Cars are a leading cause of global warming. Your feet are zero pollution transportation machines.
More transportation options: Compact neighborhoods tend to have higher population density, which leads to more public transportation options and bicycle infrastructure. Not only is taking the bus cheaper than driving, but riding a bus is ten times safer than driving a car!
Increased social capital: Walking increases social capital by promoting face-to-face interaction with your neighbors. Studies have shown that for each 10 minutes a person spends in a daily car commute, time spent in community activities falls by 10 percent.
Stronger local businesses: Dense, walkable neighborhoods provide local businesses with the foot traffic they need to thrive. It's easier for pedestrians to shop at many stores on one trip, since they don't need to drive between destinations.”


“Walkable communities tend to have the following characteristics:

A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a discernable center, whether it's a shopping district, a main street, or a public space.
Density: The neighborhood is dense enough for local businesses to flourish and for public transportation to be cost effective.
Mixed income, mixed use: Housing is provided for everyone who works in the neighborhood: young and old, singles and families, rich and poor. Businesses and residences are located near each other.
Parks and public space: There are plenty of public places to gather and play.
Accessibility: The neighborhood is accessible to everyone and has wheelchair access, plenty of benches with shade, sidewalks on all streets, etc.
Well-connected, speed controlled streets: Streets form a connected grid that improves traffic by providing many routes to any destination. Streets are narrow to control speed, and shaded by trees to protect pedestrians.
Pedestrian-centric design: Buildings are placed close to the street to cater to foot traffic, with parking lots relegated to the back.
Close schools and workplaces: Schools and workplaces are close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.”


Sightline has also developed a progress index, The Cascadia Scorecard that uses seven indicator trends to measure progress toward sustainability: Health, Economy, Population, Energy, Sprawl, Forests and Pollution.

If you are interested in shaping a walkable community in your neighborhood you can find additional information at Walkable Communities, Inc.

If you are interested in walkable neighborhood design examples check out MHSM neighborhood plans here.

A May 2005 report, A Review of the Federal Role in Regional Economic Development by Mark Drabenstott of the Center for the Study of Rural America, presents an insightful look at the role of government in Economic Development. This study shares some ED history and explains how the federal government is organized to support economic development.

“The current federal hand in economic development is not easy to characterize. Programs have grown up in nearly every corner of government over the past 50 years or more. Nine federal departments and another four agencies all get involved in one form of economic development or another. This effort is largely unfocused—there is no overriding goal focusing the effort. In that sense, it is far easier to list the 180 programs involved in economic development than to describe the policy driving them. However, what can be said is that many of the programs assume that regional economic development is largely homogeneous across the nation, and is driven by an industrial economic engine.”

Drivers of regional economic development have evolved over time. The 50’s thru the early 80’s were the age of industrial recruiting, deregulation in the 80’s brought on cost competition, and accelerated globalization of markets in the 90’s led us to a currently developing age of Regional Competitiveness. The main drivers of this current trend are innovation and entrepreneurship. Human capital and higher education are critical assets in our current understanding of this new era. The following are additional excerpts from the study:

…”critical distinction between today and the earlier eras is that economic development is no longer a matter of one economic development strategy applied to all regions—what some might call a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Industrial recruitment was universal. Indeed, the remnants of this strategy still run far and wide. Competing on cost was a similarly far-flung approach. Regional competitiveness, by contrast, is highly idiosyncratic. Every region has a different set of economic assets, a unique capacity to innovate, its own crop of entrepreneurs, and its own opportunities in global markets.”


“The theory that a region’s growth depends on exploiting its indigenous assets is the critical foundation to regional competitiveness…how regions grow has developed in three distinct strands of economic research. Some economists are focusing on the importance of clusters, suggesting that a concentration of similar firms creates synergies that can fuel growth. Others describe a new economic geography, in which local amenities are critical determinants in creating a pool of skills and capital that can spawn new ideas and businesses and grow a region’s economy. Still others focus more on entrepreneurs and innovation, arguing that fresh technologies and the right climate can lead to a rich seedbed of businesses, spurring economic gains. While each strand has merit in its own right, together they form a strong consensus that regional competitiveness is becoming the accepted model for regional economic growth.”

This research supports the competitive communities model of brainpower, quality place and innovation. Uncovering assets that bring entrepreneurs and higher education to the table of creative collaboration will lead to unique regional ED strategies.

Our current work includes a regional ED strategy built on the music history of the Louisiana Hayride and its neighborhood, where the cultures of south and west collided with the blending of country, blues, gospel and jazz leading to rock-a-billy. The Foundation for Arts Music & Entertainment (FAME) is working with a regional higher education consortium of 12 institutions (CERT) to implement a regional ED plan network of rural and urban communities branded as the “Magic Circle”. To learn more you can download the plan, Shreveport’s Historic Music Village .

The competitive communities model and open economic networks are innovative strategies to advance an urban agenda for the 21st century. Collaboration and issue connections lead to more comprehensive approaches to building communities – actions that are more broadly supported and more sustainable. MHSM is currently working on a specific area redevelopment plan initiative to organize community discussion and action around – housing, education, meaningful work, safety, health, leadership and culture. “People tend to move in the direction of their conversations.” Focusing these conversations on a specific area of the inner city, beginning first with the neighborhood and expanding to the broader community, could be a beginning of change to advance an entire city toward the 21st century agenda presented by Bruce Katz in November. The idea for this plan organization comes from the work of a non-profit organization, SBCR, that incorporates these 7 elements as part of a village structure model with mutually enhancing relationships as the foundation and basis for meaningful dialogue.

The following excerpts are from a speech given by Bruce Katz, An Urban Agenda for an Urban Age, presentation prepared by Bruce Katz, Andy Altman, and Julie Wagner for the Urban Age Conference in Berlin, Germany on November 10, 2006. The challenges presented are consistent with the work of our firm and network of partners.


…”we call for an Urban Agenda that matches the pace and intensity of the Urban Age. This Urban Agenda will embrace the goals of competitive, sustainable, and inclusive cities and, equally important, commit to pursuing and delivering these objectives in tandem. That will require wholesale change in how people— practitioners, policymakers, and researchers—do their business. It will necessitate programs and policies that drive integrative, multi-dimensional thinking and action. It will extol the role of the physical, emphasizing the importance of building cities that are adaptive and resilient and advance broader objectives. It will reinvent urban politics to advance the new urban paradigm. And it will require multinational corporations to be grounded in “place” and become strong partners for change.

Make no mistake, the stakes are high: the path of development in many cities around the world is simply not sustainable socially or environmentally or politically – nor, ultimately, economically.

Not only is our world increasingly urban, this urbanity is increasing at a scale…at a speed…fuelled by mobility and diversity… arranged in a complexity…and tied together with a level of connectivity…never before seen or experienced.

So, where do we go from here? How do we design and implement an Urban Agenda that matches the pace and intensity of the Urban Age?

The goals of the Urban Agenda—competitive cities, sustainable cities, inclusive cities—are not at issue. The trinity of economy, environment and equity is substantively warranted, morally imperative and widely accepted.

Cities are complex and interdependent. As such, they require multi-dimensional, integrated and holistic interventions.

This century’s Urban Agenda needs to be about delivery as much as aspiration.

PROSPERITY / SUSTAINABILITY / INCLUSIVITY
Transportation
Education
Economic Development
Environmental Protection
Housing ,sources: The World Bank; Various

It is an agenda that must empower people, with more integrated and transformative programs and policies, through a heightened awareness of the physical “place”, with a realignment of politics, and an infusion of new partners.

We first need to focus on the people who deliver the Urban Agenda. Imagine networks of city builders who cut across disciplines, programs, practices, and professions. These city builders will perfect new ways of “reading” cities, and deploy new metrics and measures to diagnose city assets and ailments and gauge city progress. They will be fluent in multiple city “languages”—architecture, demographics, engineering, economics, and sociology—and be cognizant of theory and practice. Modern society has deified specialists and technicians who diagnose and strive to fix discrete problems, say traffic congestion or slum housing.

If cities are to succeed, we must build a generation of generalists who see the connections between challenges and work to devise and implement policies that advance multiple objectives simultaneously.

If cities are the organizing units of the new global order, then a broad range of policies and practices at the city, national and supra-national levels need to be overhauled, re-ordered, and integrated around new spatial realities and paradigms.

We need to break down the barriers between specialized and self-referential disciplines, professions, and bureaucracies.

We need to link learnings and share innovations across networks of urban researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, across the developing and developed worlds.

We need to build cities that are prosperous, sustainable and inclusive.”

The Quality Place component of Competitive Communities is aimed at understanding and building value in uniqueness. We are developing Quality Place Measures to establish current position, assess impact / direction of community growth values and assist in charting a course for the future. It is not a device to rank communities against one another. It is simply a measure and value direction scale for charting place characteristics. There are nine categories of measure. Contact us to learn more.

Marketable ideas about growth have passed from one community to another without an understanding of the consequences and without tools to manage good and bad impacts. The result is often a rather uninteresting sameness that adversely impacts unique character that distinguishes a community. The Competitive Communities framework can serve as a simple tool for organizing dialogue about community actions and outcomes as well as beginning to connect quality place strategies with brainpower and innovation strategies.

There are a number of organizations working to increase the body of knowledge about quality place and provide tools to assist communities in growing smarter and in becoming more sustainable. Many of these guidelines are the result of research on negative consequences of growth patterns that are proving unsustainable. More sustainable approaches have now become marketable. These new characteristics are often reminiscent of older inner neighborhoods that have, over time, lost value and show symptoms of disinvestments while prosperity has moved outward. These new / old ideas about planning community are a good fit for inner neighborhoods that have suffered neglect.

However, the new principals are often used to retool outward growth strategies that continue to not fully address the broader issues of competitive communities and regions. It remains easier and more profitable to develop in a green field. Although it is a better growth pattern than low-density sprawl, these efforts could be more aptly branded “new suburbanism”.

If you would like to know about principals of growing smarter the Smart Growth Network and the International City/ County Management Association (ICMA) have produced two documents to assist communities in implementing better growth policies:

·Getting to Smart Growth: 100 policies for implementation

·Getting to Smart Growth II

These two documents provide examples that demonstrate applications of smart growth principals:

1. Mix land uses
2. Take advantage of compact building design
3. Create a range of housing opportunities and choices
4. Create walkable communities
5. Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
6. Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
7. Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities
8. Provide a variety of transportation choices
9. Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost-effective
10. Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration

Download a presentation; Making Land Development Regulations Work for Smart Growth , that includes links to resource organizations. Smart Growth America has also re-released a 2004 publication; Smart Growth is Smart Business, Boosting the Bottom Line and Community Prosperity . Smart Growth America has a number of other resource publications that will be helpful in becoming a smarter community.

What are the programmatic requirements that can establish the criteria for planning and designing communities and regions that attract creative and entrepreneurial people to build a knowledge economy?

What is a knowledge economy? How does the knowledge economy impact both high level emerging technology and added value to more traditional business? How might that change thinking of how we envision our future communities?

How can the entire state, urban and rural, north and south, participate in the knowledge economy? What are the assets to build on throughout the state? How can these assets be connected or linked to form local and regional knowledge clusters?

Collaboration is a virtue of the knowledge economy. How can this concept change the way we develop communities? How should communities be organized or function to support the concepts of collaboration?

Innovation / Entrepreneurs, Brainpower / Education, Quality Place / Uniqueness Values and Open Dialogue / Diversity are characteristics of Competitive Communities in a Knowledge Economy. How will we develop growth models and policies that shape these knowledge communities?

The following are excerpts from Knowledge Clusters and Entrepreneurship as Keys to Regional Economic Development, a conference report published by the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs. This conference gathered many researchers and professionals to discuss current conditions, challenges, opportunities and nature of the knowledge economy:

“Because of economic integration, what happens in one region affects what happens in another. The movement of information, capital, services, and products presents new competitors and customers for companies and regions. “

“As large business enterprises threaten to shift their operations and jobs to lower cost locations, cities and regions grow anxious about losing what in many cases may be their main employer. Yet, with the emergence of India, China, and other low wage economies, it is clear that regions in Western Europe and North America cannot expect, nor should they wish, to compete on cost alone, as this will only result in a downward spiral of wages and standard of living. “

“Faced with these new economic realities, regional developers…are aware of the need to assess and build upon the social and human capital assets that already exist in their region, rather than relying on attracting mobile investment from elsewhere (sometimes called smokestack chasing). One promising model combines a focus on entrepreneurship with the strengthening of knowledge-based networks or clusters. With knowledge now the fundamental basis of competitive advantage, regional economic development agencies are looking for ways to grow and attract clusters of innovative, knowledge-based activity. Because the creativity and innovation of individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams often generate and sustain these clusters, strategies that focus on both entrepreneurship promotion and cluster development are worth a closer look. “

“Research suggests that entrepreneurial activity is largely place-based, a product of the local culture, institutional arrangements, business environment, and the unique skills and knowledge base in a particular area…successful entrepreneurs “do what they know,” but in innovative and marketable ways. Despite the mobility of business, knowledge tends to remain localized; therefore, regional economic developers must focus on improving the competitiveness of their “place.” They should have a strategic approach to building the local knowledge base, which will make their area attractive to entrepreneurs positioned to exploit it.” (David Audretsch)

A knowledge cluster strategy recognizes that local businesses, which share a common knowledge base, can promote regional growth, partly by providing a dynamic environment for entrepreneurship. Knowledge clusters and entrepreneurship alike revolve around creative people, so in the knowledge economy, the differentiating factor for both people and places is talent.“

“…regional developers should specifically focus on attracting the 25- to 34-year-old population, because they constitute the core of this talented class. They also are the most mobile and therefore, to some extent, “up for grabs.” The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research presented by Fitzsimons showed this age group to have the highest entrepreneurship rates in almost every country covered by the survey…rural or urban, regions should build on their own distinctive assets and use their uniqueness to attract this valuable population cohort.”

“An open culture is one that supports risk taking and gives people freedom to fail in an endeavor and try again... The demonstration effect that is evident in successful clusters can play an important role in encouraging both the acceptance and practice of risk taking. When one person undertakes successful entrepreneurial activity, others observe this activity and begin to feel that they too can do it (Audretsch, Fitzsimons).

As global integration shifted U.S. comparative advantage toward knowledge-based economic activity and value-added niche markets, entrepreneurship and small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) began to play an increasingly vital role. Global integration and technological change set the stage for the shift from slow-growth, bureaucratic corporations to the nimble, responsive, knowledge-based industries of the new economy. With factors such as speed, innovation, flexibility, and knowledge essential to economic growth and development, entrepreneurship has emerged as a key player in driving regional economic prosperity.” (From 60 to 80 percent of new net jobs are created by small businesses, especially those under two years old)

“Contrary to popular expectations, innovation occurs not only in the latest computer and biomedical products; it also can be a competitive advantage for low-tech entrepreneurs such as artisans” (Rosenfeld).

“One important need is for locally available financing. Examples of the effort to meet that need are the Regional Angel Investment Network (RAIN) funds in Minnesota (Mercil).”

“… knowledge clusters resemble a public good; they provide benefits for many but may be under produced if not encouraged by government and community involvement.
Knowledge benefits are not easily, automatically, or efficiently transmitted throughout a region. The fact that clusters are much stronger in some regions than others with similar assets suggests that local institutional arrangements, practices, and culture can do much to help or hinder knowledge spillovers.”

“The cluster phenomenon suggests that competitive advantage lies not solely within firms but also within specific locations. Firms in clusters benefit from linkages (among firms, workers, financiers, and so forth) and spillovers, as well as complementary assets in skills, technology, and economic information. The existence of externalities points to the need for private and public actors to work together to eliminate constraints to cluster development and to enhance the contributions of public assets, including educational institutions (Porter, 2000). Conditions and events with spillover benefits, such as the presence of serial entrepreneurs or the acceptance of calculated risk… can be considered a quasi-public good. Learning effects, in other words, are good for the private sector, but private actors do not have the incentive to provide sufficient learning for others.”

“Local proximity is essential for accessing knowledge spillovers. Both knowledge-based firms and workers place a greater value on locations with clusters than those without. Because of knowledge spillovers, the value of an entrepreneurial firm is greater in the (local) presence of other entrepreneurial firms. Yet individual firms and workers are reluctant to invest in the creation of such a cluster . . . due to the public nature of knowledge. Policy makers, whose interest lies in generating growth for a particular location, have to step in” (Audretsch 2003).

“Key Components to a Knowledge Cluster Strategy
·Understand your local knowledge base.
·Develop strategies for promoting innovation around knowledge clusters.
·Promote a regional basis for developing local strategies."

Additional information can be found at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute and about the Knowledge Clusters Conference where online presenter presentations are available. MHSM has prepared a regional knowledge cluster plan that is proceeding to implementation, Shreveport’s Historic Music Village: A Regional Economic Development Strategy.

There are a number of groups and think tanks comparing communities in an attempt to set a standard for all to aspire. It should be no surprise that many of these groups base their rankings not on objective criteria but on certain biases about taxes, social judgments or economic agenda. Peter Fisher, in a 2005 study for the Economic Policy Institute - Grading Places, What do the Business Climate Rankings Really Tell Us? - looks at ranking systems and how they stack up to testing judgment criteria with more objective performance measures. This revealing work documents that rankings are often aimed at setting policy agenda for government and in so doing are not instructive in establishing effective innovation strategies for competitive communities. Have you been confused trying to understand state and community rankings? This document presents a new perspective. Peter explains underlying agenda and shortcomings in methodology for the eight indexes evaluated. The following are several excerpts from the report:

“Newspapers love rankings. Their readers have an apparently insatiable interest in how a particular state or city compares to others. Recognizing this, a number of advocacy think tanks have accommodated the press in recent years by creating and publicizing rankings that purport to show which states or cities have the best “business climate,” the most “competitive” tax and regulatory environment, or the conditions most conducive to small business growth and entrepreneurialism…The purpose of this report is to dissect these various indices to see what really drives them. Are they based on science? Do they have biases? Do they in fact work as predictors of economic activity?”

“Thirty-four of the 50 states can brag that they are in the top 10 in terms of business climate or competitiveness; they just have to pick which of the five indexes they want to point to. Forty-four states are in the top 20 on at least one of the five. Only two states are among the top 15 on all five rankings; no state is in the bottom 15 on all five measures. The average state’s best ranking is 26 positions above its worst.”

“The underlying problem with the five indexes, of course, is twofold: none of them actually do a very good job of measuring what it is they claim to measure, and they do not, for the most part, set out to measure the right things to begin with.”

“It is precisely because the competitiveness indexes produced by the ideological think tanks are aimed at promoting particular kinds of legislation that they do a poor job of predicting state economic growth: the measures used must pass an ideology screen, so the validity and relevance criteria go by the wayside. This is also why the indexes are probably ignored by the business people actually making the decisions. They should be ignored by policy makers for the same reason.”

The whole is generally greater than the sum of its parts. It is also true that all the parts of a whole are connected. Apply the dictum to fundamental parts of regions – neighborhoods. Stronger and healthier parts lift the whole to new heights. Conversely, weaker parts lower the value of the whole. There is a question somewhere in these thoughts about balance and management.

The challenge American communities face is how to grow without abandoning neighborhoods and the human potential left behind to navigate in an expanding sea of poverty. We have observed the deterioration of inner communities and older suburbs for decades. Policies and strategies have been implemented to treat symptoms without adequately understanding the causes or measuring the effects.

There is hope. Finding connections between quality place, innovation and brainpower results in neighborhoods where moving up does not mean moving out. Bruce Katz does his usual good work in capturing how we have gotten to our current condition of neighborhoods and sets forth a new vision in a Brookings paper, Neighborhoods of Choice and Connection: The Evolution of American Neighborhood Policy and What It Means for the United Kingdom.

Katz defines a new vision for neighborhoods of choice and connection:

“Neighborhoods of choice are communities in which people of lower incomes can both find a place to start and, as their incomes rise, a place to stay. They are also communities to which people of higher incomes can move, for their distinctiveness or amenities or location. This requires, first and foremost, an acceptance of economic integration as a goal of neighborhood and housing policy. It also requires a dynamic, market-driven notion of neighborhood change, rather than any “community control” vision dedicated to maintaining the status quo.”

“Neighborhoods of connection are communities which link families to opportunity, wherever that opportunity is located. This requires a new, profound, and sustained commitment to improving the “educational offer” in these communities and the cities in which they are largely located. It also requires a new, mature, and pragmatic vision of the changing “geography of opportunity,” particularly with regard to jobs and other housing choices.”

There are many examples of connections but perhaps the most important are neighborhood schools. Katz explains what research shows:

“Every school system has a direct impact on its neighborhoods. Schools affect housing markets… home values… success of marketing newly developed housing… the ability to retain residents in a particular school system or local community.”

Murphy Park redevelopment in St Louis focused on the neighborhood school, Jefferson Elementary, and achieved remarkable results for revitalizing the neighborhood and improving student performance. (Pages 16-19)

The following are excerpts from the paper that describe our current condition of deteriorating neighborhoods:

“In a suburban nation that treasures the “new,” these places stand out for their visible poverty and often-dilapidated, sometimes-vacant housing and commercial structures. Bearing the mark of a succession of government programs, these communities seem strangely out of place in this prosperous country—a grim reminder of the racial, ethnic, and class divisions that persist beneath celebrations of the American dream.”

“…search out the underlying causes of weakness or evil in the community, rather than …[remedy] their most superficial manifestations …” (Joseph Rowntree) A true rebirth of distressed areas will only occur if we make these places neighborhoods of choice for individuals and families with a broad range of incomes and neighborhoods of connection that are fully linked to metropolitan opportunities…this thesis fundamentally challenges neighborhood policies which, under the guise of “revitalizing communities,” reinforce patterns of concentrated poverty—the root cause of neighborhood distress. It also demands that neighborhood actions operate within the broader metropolitan “geography of opportunity” rather than the insular, fixed borders of deprived areas.”

“Since World War II, the decentralization of economic and residential life has been the dominant fact of metropolitan growth in the United States. In place after place, explosive sprawl where farmland once reigned has been matched by decline or slower growth in the central cities and older suburbs. In the largest metropolitan areas, the rate of population growth for suburbs was more than three times that of central cities—60.3 percent versus 17.2 percent— between 1970 and 2000.”

“As people went, so did jobs…the suburbs now dominate employment growth and are no longer just bedroom communities for workers commuting to traditional downtowns…. The result is that the American economy has essentially become an exit-ramp economy…a new spatial geography of work and opportunity has emerged in metropolitan America.”

“These unbalanced growth patterns…helped construct the metropolitan dividing lines that separate areas of wealth and opportunity from areas of poverty and distress.”

“These unbalanced growth patterns are also not inevitable. They are fundamentally shaped by a complicated mix of federal and state spending programs, tax expenditures, regulatory practices, and administrative policies. Federal and state policies, taken together, set “rules of the development game” that tend to facilitate the decentralization of the economy and the concentration of urban poverty.”

“Metropolitan areas with myriad small local governments sprawl more than those with larger units of local government... local governments compete with one another to gain desirable land uses (retail and other non-polluting business uses that yield high property or sales taxes while demanding few services) and to avoid less desirable ones (high density and affordable housing, which yields lower property taxes and demands more services, especially education).”

“…research has demonstrated that all children—middle-class, poor, black, white, Asian, and Latino—perform better in integrated, middle-class schools than in schools of concentrated poverty.”

“Beyond educational achievement, research shows that adults and teenagers who live in areas of concentrated poverty face real barriers to participation in the workplace. These barriers owe partly to the emergence of a “spatial mismatch” between inner-city residents and jobs associated with the decentralization of employment.”MHSM recently completed a plan to address spatial mismatch, Job Access – Transportation Plan

“The evidence is also mounting that living in high-poverty neighborhoods has negative health implications, partly owing to the stress of being poor and marginalized and partly owing to one’s life transpiring in a deprived environment of dilapidated housing and run-down neighborhoods.”


“…the federal government has—over the course of the past several decades—pursued three distinct sets of strategies to address the challenges of distressed communities and the families who live there.
The dominant strategy—which I will call the “improving the neighborhood” strategy— focuses on making urban communities quality places in which to live. This is a place-based strategy that … seeks to spark revitalization by improving the physical stock and commercial quality of the community. … neighborhood improvement strategies “confuse the linkages between the revitalization of a neighborhood and the alleviation of poverty.” … the neighborhood improvement field sorely needs consolidation and streamlining… metrics by which neighborhood improvement is assessed rarely take into account the broader goals of poverty alleviation and access to opportunity.
The second strategy—which I will call the “expanding opportunity” strategy—focuses on giving the individual residents of distressed neighborhoods greater access to quality jobs and good schools in the broader metropolis, wherever they may be. This is a people-based strategy that seeks, by either moving residents to areas of lower poverty or by linking them to employment and educational opportunity in the metropolitan area, to improve, first and foremost, family outcomes.
The final strategy—which I will call the “transforming the neighborhood” strategy—is the most recent and, in many respects, the most ambitious. It focuses on fundamentally altering the socio-economic mix of distressed neighborhoods and creating communities that are economically integrated and attractive to a broad range of households. This strategy has both place- and people-based components, and it works simultaneously to create neighborhoods of choice and to smooth low-income residents’ access to opportunity through housing mobility and services that support work…this new vision treats people and place policies as fundamentally intertwined and mutually reinforcing.”

Katz also suggests new neighborhood policies:

“First, neighborhoods and neighborhood policy need to be set within a metropolitan context

Second, broader national, state, and local policies need to align with the goals of neighborhood policy…fix the basics. …adopt smart growth policies… connect low-income families to employment opportunities and embrace policies that build income and reward work.

Third, neighborhood policy needs to embrace economic and demographic diversity in both cities and suburbs

Fourth, neighborhood policy needs a new mix of private- and community-sector action, in both cities and suburbs

Finally, neighborhood policy needs to be implemented in an integrated, accountable and sustainable fashion.”