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Monday, February 08, 2010
By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects.
Anyone who follows urban revitalization trends is aware that, in addition to artists, the “first wave” of central-city pioneers is often comprised by gay residents. They move into disinvested neighborhoods, refurbish homes and either sell them or plant stakes in the community. I hazard to use the term “gentrifier,” because I never quite understood how turning around dilapidated neighborhoods was a pejorative act. Isn’t the improvement of...
Thursday, February 04, 2010
By J. Mac Holladay, founder and CEO.
This recession has had a devastating effect on small businesses across the country. In fact, 41% of all the jobs lost in this recession have come from firms with fewer than 50 employers. That is FIVE TIMES the small business job losses than the 2001 recession.
Two important things have happened recently that make this the right time to focus programs on starting and assisting small firms.
First, two weeks ago the Small Business...
Monday, February 01, 2010
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate.
My alma mater, Tougaloo College, which is a private college located right outside of Jackson, Mississippi, offers an early admission program for high school juniors who meet certain criteria, like GPA and ACT scores. A participant in that program, I bypassed my senior year of high school to start college with a full scholarship. In my 15-year-old thoughts, I could not rationalize staying in high school for an extra year when I was planning to go to...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
By William Teasley. High quality public education is one of the greatest assets in economic development. The ability to generate a high quality workforce is paramount to the success of existing a future businesses in any community. It is often one of the top three questions asked by business looking to relocate in a community and telling the prospect that you have really good private schools does not address their questions.
In numerous districts across the country, education is often left...
Friday, January 22, 2010
By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate
The U.S. Department of Labor awarded $100 million in green
jobs training grants to 25 communities earlier this month. Austin, Texas received $4.8 million of this money to train for and create 1,000 green energy
jobs. A thousand jobs is a boost for a local workforce of any size, but $4.8
million is a pretty steep price. The real payoff occurs not when those initial
thousand jobs are created but when that employment spurs a...
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
By Matt Tarleton, Project Associate.
I recently wrote a piece about the migration patterns of the
college educated ,
identifying some of the metropolitan areas that have been successful in
attracting new residents with average educational attainment levels that exceed
the educational attainment levels of their existing resident population.
A new paper by Chad Moutray, Chief Economist and Director of Economic Research at
the Office of Advocacy of the...
Friday, January 15, 2010
By Alex Pearlstein, Senior Project Manager.
The provision of incentives is one of the most controversial issues in economic development today and likely will be for a number of years to come. As the competition for relocation prospects intensifies so will the resources applied to influence companies’ decision-making. While much research exists decrying the awarding of significant incentives to large employers, still more will tout the economic benefits of a major recruitment win such...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
By Ellen Anderson, Director of Research.
As the U.S. Census Bureau rolls out each new year of American Community Survey (ACS) implementation, the survey offers a greater variety of data to a broader reach of geographies. The 2008 ACS includes data on property taxes for counties with populations of at least 65,000 residents, marking the first publicly available data set of its kind in terms of scope and accuracy that will be reliably updated on a regular basis. The Census Bureau defines...
Friday, January 08, 2010
By J. Mac Holladay, Founder and CEO.
This week in Atlanta the American Economic Association held its annual meeting. There were PhDs everywhere, nearly 1000 of them. Finally on the last day of the meeting they asked the only relevant question covered at the meeting. To paraphrase, the question is, “How did they blow it so badly?” Virtually none of these theorists came close to predicting what we have been through in the past two years.
What is interesting is to consider is...
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate. Everyone who knows me knows that one of my least favorite pastimes is driving in traffic. Any time I have to drive from one area of Atlanta to another, especially if it’s any time between 4:00 pm and 6:30 pm, I’m frustrated and tense by the time I get to my destination. And that’s before I start thinking of what I could have been doing if I had not needed to leave extra early to ensure I get there on time. Luckily, I am able to use public...
Thursday, December 31, 2009
By William Teasley, Project Manager.
At Market Street , we often talk about change and growth of communities and the people within them. As an outside observer it is sometimes easier to see what impedes communities moving forward than those from within which have become accustomed to what they know and see. During numerous input sessions in 2009, people have shared frustrations, positions, hopes, and dreams about their communities. There is one story shared by one...
Monday, December 28, 2009
By J. Mac Holladay, Founder and CEO.
It is hard to believe that we are headed to a new year and a new decade in a few days. Time Magazine called the last 10 years “The Decade from Hell”. The pace of change has continued to accelerate and certainly some of the changes are unprecedented. Two recessions, a cascading number of corporate scandals too numerous to list, natural disasters led by Katrina and Rita, and two ongoing wars. Then the last two years of “The Great Recession” (as...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representative passed its $154
billion jobs bill, called the Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010 .
Among other things, the expansive legislation hopes to increase infrastructure
projects that would provide construction jobs, as well as enable communities to
retain and hire teachers, firefighters, and other public servants. The Senate
will not look at the bill until the new year so elements of the bill...
Friday, December 18, 2009
By Matt Tarleton, Project Associate.
“ Change is debilitating when done to us, but exhilarating when done by us .” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
This quote is one of Mac Holladay’s favorites, and it has quickly become one of mine as well. When looking back on 2009, many of us entered this year hopeful amidst tremendous economic uncertainty. We had elected a new president that inundated us with his messages of hope and change. But when I look back at what have likely been the two...
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
By Ellen Anderson, Research Manager.
While there are many varied strategies that can be employed in the name of economic development, the goal is wealth creation for local families. Per capita income(PCI) is one of the most common and reliable gauges for economic development progress because it measures community wealth per resident. Increasing per capita income can take years and require far-reaching economic diversification, quality of life, and workforce strategies. Exploring which...
Friday, December 11, 2009
By Alex Pearlstein, Senior Project Manager. Time magazine has taken pity on Detroit. It is sponsoring a campaign called “ Selling Detroit ” that aims to help “America’s most struggling city (attract) business and talent.” Part of a yearlong project – Assignment Detroit – reporters and editors from Essence, Fortune, Money, Sports Illustrated, Time and related Web sites are living in a Detroit house and writing about the city from an on-the-ground perspective. Maybe Detroit is less depressing...
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate.
Many feel
that innovation and technology transfer are the keys to future economic
growth. With the decline in
manufacturing jobs, math, science, and engineering fields have become
increasingly important. In a report
recently published by Newsweek , attitudes about innovation and global competitiveness were
compared across nationalities. As I’ve become more acclimated to the
consulting world, I’ve...
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate.
During the community input phase of each project we work on, a
comment we usually hear repeated in almost every community is regarding the
lack of adequate or quality child care options for working families. In the
past, child care has been seen as a welfare or social services issue, rather
than a critical component of successful economic development; therefore,
business recruitment, retention, and expansion efforts did not...
Thursday, November 19, 2009
By William Teasley, Project Manager.
I recently had the pleasure of working with the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce in creating the One Vision – One Voice – One Morgan County community strategy that addresses near term challenges while preparing the community for a positive future. One of the Goal areas addressed the need to engage new faces and young professionals in leading initiatives critical to the County’s future success. This is often a significant...
Monday, November 16, 2009
By Matt Tarleton, Project Associate. One the most common things we hear from communities across the country is a desire to be a magnet for the college-educated. High-tech centers such as the San Diego, San Francisco, and Boston metropolitan areas have had little trouble attracting new college graduates in the pursuit of lucrative careers. The same is true for our nation’s capital, a destination for many college graduates seeking federal government and government-related employment....
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
By Alex Pearlstein, Senior Project Manager. A Sunday article in the Des Moines Register on the steep decline of manufacturing jobs in rural Iowa communities again called to mind the plight facing hundreds – perhaps thousands – of U.S. cities and towns as their traditional economies gradually fade away. After Webster City, Iowa’s largest employer announced the closure of its plant, a local businessman defiantly resisted the possibility that Webster City would one day become a “ghost town.”
...
Friday, November 06, 2009
By Ellen Anderson, Research Manager.
It is estimated that nearly nine million households in the United States do not maintain bank accounts. That is a staggering number of people who do not participate in the mainstream financial system. They cannot write a check, they pay excessive fees to check-to-cash shops, and they are likely not building credit that is essential for longer-term economic mobility. According to a study from the Pew Charitable Trust, approximately 89 percent of these...
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that a private Chinese
energy farm is constructing a $1.5 billion wind farm in western Texas, to be completed in 2011. The wind farm will add 300 temporary
construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs to the west Texas economy.
Manufacture of the turbines, however, is the real job
generator, expected to create 2,000 jobs. The catch? The wind turbines will be
built in...
Friday, October 30, 2009
By Ranada Robinson.
Have you ever heard of dropout factories? Well, according to a report published last month by the Alliance for Excellent Education, there’s probably one near you, especially if you live in the South. More than half of the high school dropouts in America (which is 1 in every 3 students) come from 12 percent of all the high schools in the nation. In these high schools, called “dropout factories,” 60 percent or fewer freshmen make it to their senior year in...