There has long been an implied social contract in the United States promising that if people work hard they will be able to earn enough to support their families. Increasingly, that contract is broken. As the number of low-wage jobs continues to grow, urban leaders must confront the social cost of large numbers of citizens who fall into the category of the “working poor.”
Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections that by 2014 nearly half of all job openings will be filled by individuals with a high school education or less, social research expert Gordon Berlin concludes that “low-wage work and the relentless recession it signifies are here to stay.”
This paper addresses the composition of the low-wage workforce, factors that have contributed to the growth of low-wage work, government supports available to the working poor, and promising strategies to connect such workers to opportunities in the labor market. It concludes with a series of steps urban leaders can take to strengthen their communities by assisting low-wage workers.
When GM depicted a new vision of the good life for Americans at the 1939 World’s Fair (vivid pictures of a highway system that ran through the rural farmland into the heart of a well-ordered urban environment, where every family would own at least one car and would use it as their primary mode of transportation) it looked like a dream come true.
And you know what? It worked. A lot of people shared that dream. We have freeways connecting every major city in America. Most families in America have not just one but two or three cars.
We also have gridlock traffic. And pollution. And an addiction to foreign oil.
Our health is in danger from sitting too much and moving too little. And we’ve undermined the natural advantages of cities for innovation, opportunity and efficiency by spreading too few people over too much land.
It is increasingly clear that the old American dream is shattered. We need a new American dream to replace it, a dream better suited for today’s realities. We need a new definition of the good life.
Do you have an idea about what the new American Dream ought to be? Post it here.
As part of our research series taking an in-depth look at the factors for urban success outlined in City Vitals, CEOs for Cities with support from the Chicago Community Trust commissioned Paul Jargowsky at the University of Texas at Dallas and Todd Swanstrom at the University of Missouri St. Louis to explore ways to increase economic integration in cities.
Three key points in the paper include:
1) When metropolitan areas are economically segregated, every problem becomes harder to address.
2) Suburban sprawl has been an engine of economic segregation.
3) Infill development increases the possibilities for stable integrated neighborhoods.
The paper offers a number of strategies for increasing economic integration in cities. Once applied, these strategies result in better access to opportunity for poorer populations, increasing their chances of moving out of poverty and helping cities capture their Opportunity Dividend.
Download the Economic Integration briefing paper here.
A copy of the full report is available by request by emailing Sheila Redick at sredick@ceosforcities.org.
Despite tough economic times, America’s 51 largest cities have the opportunity to collectively realize $166 billion in much-needed new wealth by focusing on performance improvements in three key areas: increasing the educational attainment of their citizens, reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled per person each day and reducing the number of people living in poverty, according to a new analysis, City Dividends, released by CEOs for Cities.
City Dividends, which was developed by Portland, Ore., economist Joe Cortright and presented to members of CEOs for Cities its National Meeting in Chicago, calculates the monetary gains the top 51 metros could realize if they increase their college attainment by one percentage point (The Talent Dividend), reduce VMT by 1 mile per person per day (The Green Dividend) and reduce the number of people in poverty (The Opportunity Dividend) by one percentage point.
City Dividends is designed to help urban leaders make the case for pubic policies that will help raise incomes, encourage citizens to drive less and increase opportunities for bringing people out of poverty. City Dividends establishes a framework for examining the policies, actions and conditions that are needed for cities to actually realize these gains in practice.
“In an era of fiscal constraint at every level of government, leaders must innovate new ways for producing wealth and opportunity,” said Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities. “Representing the nation’s primary source of wealth, employment and global competitiveness, cities are where the strategies to keep America moving forward must be developed and launched.”
To engage cities in the initiative, CEOs for Cities has created the City Dividends Compact – a contract that urban leaders can sign to indicate their commitment to realizing these untapped revenue sources.
Over the next 18 months, CEOs for Cities will work with urban leaders in cities that sign on to the compact to develop strategies to capture these dividends and will track progress in each of the performance areas.
“Our objective in this work is to estimate the economic and fiscal stakes involved in each of these key aspects of urban revitalization,” said Coletta. “City Dividends can be customized and applied to the situations of individual metropolitan areas and used as a tool in policy planning.”
The City Dividends defined:
The Talent Dividend: Per capita income and college attainment rates are closely correlated. Using data from 2006, each additional percentage point improvement in aggregate adult four-year college attainment is associated with a $763 increase in annual per capita income. Raising the national median of the top 51 metro areas from 29.4 percent to 30.4 percent would be associated with an increase in income of $124 billion per year for the nation.
The Green Dividend: In the 51 largest U.S. metro areas, the average person drives about 24.9 miles per day. If we could reduce that by one mile per day (about 4 percent), 156 million Americans would collectively drive 156 million fewer miles per day, or about 57 billion fewer miles per year. At $3.50 per gallon for gasoline, the nation would save $10 billion per year on fuel. Add the expense of purchasing and maintenance of vehicles, and the total savings would be $28.6 billion per year.
The Opportunity Dividend: In the nation’s 51 largest metro areas, the median public expenditure on Medicaid, food stamps and assistance to families including the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program and other state administered general assistance was $8,200 per person living in poverty in 2006. At this level, the national Opportunity Dividend, resulting from a one percentage point reduction in poverty, is calculated at $13.1 billion per year.
Watch the video below on the Talent Dividend:
Click here to download a PDF of the top 51 metro City Dividends data.
What is your point of view on how your city will succeed economically? Do you have a theory of success? Is it stated or unstated? And are your decisions consistent with your beliefs about what it will take to succeed?
There has always been a little mystery associated with economic development. CEOs for Cities is working to remove at least some of the uncertainty with its forthcoming publication of “City Success: Theories of Urban Prosperity.”
For the first time, urban policymakers will find an easy-to-follow description of all the theories at work today in urban economic development. They are organized by firms, people and place. The 18 paths to success are accompanied by recommendations on how to use them, as well as a matrix that shows in which areas cities must possess strengths to successfully pursue each path.
Fostering the Creative City, a paper commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and written by CEOs for Cities President and CEO Carol Coletta, traces the evolution of the creative city movement worldwide and begins to explore alternative futures for creative cities concepts. It also, for the first time, proposes a new paradigm for defining the creative city "as one that recognizes the potential creativity in all assets. In this fifth alternative future, the job becomes developing and sustaining the creative capacity of assets – people, places and connections. By recognizing that creativity exists in everyone, the opportunity for communities to succeed and the myriad of creative resources available to them significantly expands."
Finding people and organizations to partner with often comes down to personal relationships - who you know. But is this the best way?
CEOs for Cities member and City Anchors Learning Network participant John Schaerer developed this piece on creating intentional institutional partnerships. Though the work was originally intended to be shared with the Learning Network group, we thought it important to share with the broader membership. The piece holds intrinsic value for anyone interested in finding new ways to partner in order to achieve big goals.
John Schaerer is the Director of Technology Development and Transfer at the Enterprise Center in Chattanooga. Any questions or comments regarding his Institutional Alignment piece should be directed to john-schaerer@utc.edu.
A new analysis shows that high gas prices are not only implicated in the bursting of the housing bubble, but that the higher cost of commuting has already re-shaped the landscape of real estate value between cities and suburbs. Housing values are falling fastest in distant suburban and exurban neighborhoods where affordability depended directly on cheap gas.
Read the press release here. Download the full study here.
Seventy-two percent of political donors strongly agree that America cannot be strong without strong cities, and they view cities as the solution for some of the country's most pressing problems, including job growth and development, according to a new survey released today by CEOs for Cities and Living Cities. See Celinda Lake's presentation on the findings below:
While two miles per day may not seem like much, do the math and it adds up to $2.3 billion for the local economy.
This companion piece to Portland's Green Dividend looks at the impact of Chicagoland residents driving 10 percent fewer miles every day.
Want to know your city's green dividend? Contact Bridget Marquis at bmarquis@ceosforcities.org to find out more about commissioning a Green Dividend study for your city.
