Economy
A broad category of content focused on economic-related topics in cities.
Examples: jobs, finance, public-private partnerships, business management, inequality/poverty, budgeting, micro/macroeconomics
If Addressing Inequalities is the Target, Are Cities the Bullseye?
Opportunity exists to reverse structural inequalities and create inclusive societies. We are now presented an occasion to take decisive action and choose the kind of cities we want to see in the future. Short-term responses limited to reactionary planning are the symptom of current urban inequalities, and puts cities at risk of leaving many residents and communities left behind. In the long run, this impacts growth.
The Case for Innovative Climate Finance
In order to get the estimated tens of trillions of dollars in investment into low-carbon solutions across electricity, energy, buildings, agriculture, transportation, and industrial practices needed in the coming decades to prevent runaway climate change, we must focus on economic opportunities that enable people to invest without having to be convinced of the ideology behind such solutions.
How Homeownership Builds Individual and Community Wealth
The importance of property ownership is older than our nation itself. And although (thankfully) owning property is no longer a requirement for voting, home ownership makes a difference to the lives and life outcomes of individuals and their families.
Fostering Innovation & Learning with the Teaching City
The world spends far more money on urban infrastructure than health care, and there are about four-times as many urban practitioners as health care providers, yet, up until last year, there was not a single teaching city. The City of Oshawa is hoping to start a new trend – similar to a teaching hospital. The City is now serving as a ‘teaching city,’ complete with urban interns and city-based research.
7 Strategies for Cities to Maximize Benefits of Community Solar
For cities, community solar is a way to vastly increase the amount of locally generated renewable energy, along with associated benefits of local jobs, property tax revenue, and local community investment. Other renewable energy strategies like purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), carbon trading and Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (VPPAs) may help cities meet their goals, but won’t drive investment and transition within communities or give cities a tool to address energy costs for low-income residents.
Financing Resilience: How Environmental Impact Bonds Can Help Louisiana
Through EDF’s long history of working in Louisiana to protect and restore land and habitat, we saw that financing coastal resilience projects would be a key challenge for Louisiana. With climate change, other states and communities are also struggling to find funding that would allow them to adapt to rapidly changing coastal conditions. With this realization, EDF’s team partnered with Quantified Ventures, an impact investing consulting firm, to explore a key question: can innovative financing through an Environmental Impact Bond help bring much-needed capital to restoration or other coastal resilience projects, and quickly?
A Parking Solution for Smart Cities
Parking is a tough problem, and it’s a common issue for many cities across the globe. Municipalities face the challenge of keeping residents happy while also providing a welcoming atmosphere to out-of-towners when an influx of traffic occurs.
10 Ways Portland is Addressing Housing Issues
Here are 10 ways Portland is tackling housing—along a spectrum from homelessness to homeownership, and creating affordable solutions along that spectrum. We have focused our efforts on leveraging funding sources, and maximizing strategic investment opportunities.
How Smart Cities Will Impact Retail Sales
US retail is, at present in robust good health, as measured by the most important metric: overall year-on-year revenue. What’s going on is not an apocalypse, but an ever-accelerating, very-Darwinian process of natural selection.
Innovative Financing for Cities: Pay for Results, Not Process
The Environmental Impact Bond. It can be used to finance green infrastructure and similar resiliency-oriented projects, which not only protect cities against flooding and pollution, but also create jobs and green underserved neighborhoods. The return to investors of these projects is based on the extent to which the projects produce results; such as the amount of stormwater diverted from flowing into nearby rivers.
4 Tested Techniques to Catalyze Small Town Redevelopment
Driving into a town with a boarded-up Main Street or a row of abandoned factories make it look like the community has been the victim of a destructive economic process. In truth, the devastation that is apparent on the surface is really a symptom of deeper social and institutional problems that have been going on for a very long time. I have four strategies for you to make your rural redevelopment projects successful.
Finding, Measuring, and Addressing Urban Equity
Opportunity is the set of circumstances and neighborhood characteristics that make it possible for people to achieve their goals, no matter their starting point. Any serious attempt to define, measure, and expand opportunity must include both the outcomes people achieve, such as their educational attainment, health, and income, and the pathways that affect the attainment of those outcomes, like quality schools, convenient transit, and access to healthy foods.