Living Cities is committed to measuring the impact of our investments. Fundamentally, we want to ensure that our work is changing systems and increasing opportunities for low-income people. We also are documenting what we have learned and sharing it with the broader field in an effort to help us all work and invest more strategically.
Our 2010 Annual Report, New Normal, provides our perspective on what the public, private and philanthropic sector need to do together in this second decade of the 21st century to address the contemporary needs of U.S. cities.
This report, “Green Cities,” is our effort to showcase and support the innovative ways in which cities are creating an equitable green economy.
At first, stories about the current foreclosure crisis focused on half-built McMansions in suburbia. But, all along, the hardest hit have actually been low-income Americans — and the communities they live in.
The following provides an overview of why small businesses are important to regional economies, a framework for thinking about the types of small businesses, and some suggestions for practitioners about how to think about supporting the growth of small businesses.
Foreword
Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation instigated this project to encourage the financial industry to scale up financing of building energy efficiency retrofits. Deutsche Bank has a long history of supporting multifamily / affordable housing through its community development finance capabilities, and throughout the world the Bank has played a leadership role on climate issues. Scaling up building retrofits has become a compelling aspiration for the Bank, because of the alignment between our carbon reduction and community development goals.
Building scientists, auditors, enlightened building owners, and contractors have been retrofitting multifamily buildings in New York City for many decades, but the retrofit industry has largely relied on public subsidies, a limited resource that…
This report, “Green Cities,” is our effort to showcase and support the innovative ways in which cities are creating an equitable green economy. The report is based on conversations with the brightest thinkers in the field, and the findings from our survey of 40 of the country’s largest cities. “Green Cities” takes a step back to see what cities have accomplished, while also identifying areas in which their efforts have fallen short.
Moderator: Ben Hecht, President & CEO, Living Cities Panelists: Xavier de Souza Briggs, Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Gary Hattem, Managing Director, Community Development Finance Group; President, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation David Robinson, NBA Hall of Famer, Co-Founder Admiral Center The Honorable R.T. Rybak, Mayor, Minneapolis, Minnesota Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor, State University of New York (SUNY)
October 17, 2010
American Cities Are Ripe for Renewal, if Philanthropy Has the Will
By Ben Hecht
Richard Florida, the economic-development expert and author, refers to the financial meltdowns that have occurred throughout American history as Great Resets. He argues that they create a pathway for innovation and encourage new ways of doing business.
As examples, he points to the urbanization and rapid industrialization that followed the Long Depression of the late 19th century and the more recent technological expansion that followed the Great Depression in the 1930s. Without these crisis points, he contends, innovators would not have had the push necessary to move beyond their staid approaches to create something new.
Today, we clearly are in the midst of another reset and with it a…
Foreclosures, like the subprime lending that precipitated them, have been heavily concentrated in the same vulnerable neighborhoods targeted by community development efforts over the last 20 years. The resulting vacant and abandoned properties threaten the property values of neighboring homeowners, invite crime and discourage future investment.In 2007, Living Cities, a national philanthropic collaboration of 21 of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions, recognized the urgency of finding promising approaches to address the realities of the foreclosure crisis.
In Newark and other urban communities, low-income residents cannot afford to live in a healthful environment, and the costs of unhealthy living further destabilize families and entrench people in poverty. Newark’s Strong Healthy Communities Initiative (SHCI) will address these unequal conditions by using a “social determinants of health” framework to improve the economic and social well-being of targeted low-income communities through systems transformation as well as coordinated investments in housing, education, healthcare and healthy food options. In each neighborhood, the initiative will drive a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategy focused on alleviating the environmental conditions that create barriers to the educational and economic advancement of residents.
The Baltimore Integration Partnership proposes to create municipal and regional mechanisms to ensure that low-income communities benefit from large-scale economic development projects and the economic opportunities generated by anchor institutions. The initiative will work with the State of Maryland and City of Baltimore to achieve smart growth goals, including investments in transportation infrastructure; support for the redevelopment of neighborhoods at the city’s core (combating sprawl and utilizing existing water, sewer and utility systems); and finding new uses for vacant and abandoned property and buildings. Flexible funds for workforce skill development and training will be used to ensure that residents are ready to participate in the economic opportunities created and identified.…
The Cleveland initiative seeks to fully harness the power of nationally renowned anchor institutions to drive a regional economic inclusion strategy that develops jobs and businesses in the region for the benefit of low- income people. This is an integrated approach to economic development that involves generating community wealth through creation and scaling of employee-owned businesses and other suppliers to anchor institutions. It also involves the development of a Health Tech corridor that offers growing companies access to trained employees in close proximity to anchor institutions.
This effort will fight the out-migration of Detroit’s population to the suburbs and seek to “redensify” the urban core by improving safety, schools, employment, and small business opportunities. Specifically, the Woodward Corridor Initiative seeks to align anchor institution hiring and procurement, land use planning, transit corridor development, and neighborhood revitalization in ways that secure direct benefits for residents while attracting new investment. The initiative will also work to make Detroit more “business friendly” by coordinating five business divisions within the City, identifying bottlenecks, streamlining processes, and dramatically improving the climate for small business growth and private investment.
Living Cities support will advance the development of a regional, cross-sector framework for equitable Transit- Oriented Development that ensures that low-income residents, businesses and neighborhoods along the existing Hiawatha line and planned Southwest and Central lines benefit from transit-related investments. The initiative will advance corridor-wide frameworks to align public and private investments that support community-driven planning while providing a predictable environment to stimulate private investment. The initiative will also increase the capacity of affordable housing and small business intermediaries.
In 2008, responding to the impact of concentrated foreclosures on urban neighborhoods, Living Cities launched an initiative to catalyze, test and learn from 10 of the most promising local pilot efforts to reclaim foreclosed properties. The June convening, the second of its kind, brought together the grantees, other recognized local innovators, leading national practitioners, Living Cities member organizations and other public and private stakeholders. The goal of the convening was to explore the work of these leaders, identify and discuss common challenges and explore solutions.Though the local practitioners shared a common goal — to stabilize communities and create/preserve affordable housing by returning foreclosed properties to productive use — no two initiatives are the same. Some…
Founded in 1991, Living Cities is an innovative philanthropic collaborative of 22 of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions. Our members are not simply funders. They participate at the senior management level on the Living Cities Board of Directors and contribute the time of 80+ expert staff toward crafting and implementing our agenda to improve the lives of low-income urban residents and the communities in which they live.
This publication, New Normal, provides our perspective on what the public, private and philanthropic sector need to do together in this second decade of the 21st century to address the contemporary needs of U.S. cities. It is premised on the reality that none of us can afford to continue to do business as usual. We must act with urgency to bring about the meaningful changes that are necessary to ensure that our cities can compete in the global economy and become places of opportunity for low-income residents.
Living Cities was launched in 1991 as an informal partnership among seven foundations and an insurance company with a commitment to help improve under- invested urban neighborhoods and local community development organizations. It was an innovative approach that recognized the critical importance of making markets work by aggregating philanthropic investments to achieve meaningful results. Living Cities quickly emerged as a leader in addressing urban issues.
Over the years, Living Cities has engaged numerous addi- tional partners seeking to invest in and rejuvenate American cities. Today, we are the world’s largest philanthropic collaborative dedicated to improving cities and the lives of the low-income people who live in them.
TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT (TOD) is an integrated approach to land use and transportation development that creates long-term prosperity for society at large. TOD that is equitable and sustainable fosters healthy and prosperous communities, in which diverse groups of people have greater mobility choices and access to opportunity. If done right, TOD can have a myriad of social, environmental and economic benefits for people and communities, from reduced costs of living, better access to jobs, and economic growth, to healthier lifestyles and, through reduced automobile use, important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Given the profound demographic, economic, and environmental shifts the United States is experiencing, there is ample evidence that there is a substantial demand for TOD…
In Portland, Ore., 1,560 chronically homeless individuals left the street between 2005 and 2008 — representing a dramatic 70 percent reduction in the city’s popu- lation. This paper, which was written by Erik Sten, a Portland city commissioner from 1996 to 2008 and one of the main architects of that shift, seeks to explain how the city achieved such extraordinary success.When the Bush Administration required cities to produce a “10 Year Plan to End Homelessness” based on a blueprint produced in 2000 by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Sten and his staff were cynical about the Bush mandate. The mandate was given at the same time that the administration was cutting aid to cities. However, based in part by the credible source of the information, Sten and his colleagues set out to…
The New Economy Initiative (NEI) is a joint program of 10 national and local foundations that have committed $100 million to an eight-year effort designed "to foster economic growth by accelerating the transition of southeast Michigan to an innovation-based economy."
Despite decades of calls for reform, America’s public education system remains the target of sharp criticism for failing to adequately prepare young people for higher education and the jobs of the new economy. But hope is coming. Education entrepreneurs in recent years have been en- ergizing certain corners of America’s moribund public education system with innovation.
At first, stories about the current foreclosure crisis focused on half-built McMansions in suburbia. But, all along, the hardest hit have actually been low-income Americans — and the communities they live in. Now that the mortgage crisis has spiraled into a full-blown financial meltdown, the interconnections between the fate of individual homes and our nation’s financial health has become clearer.
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