In “Metropolitan Planning and Resilience Thinking: A Practitioner’s Perspective,” Cathy Wilkinson, Libby Porter, and Johan Colding report first on how the urban planners in the workshops reacted to the concept of resilience planning. Their working definition of resilience (much simplified here) is based on the concept of an adaptive cycle (think nature), essentially successful self-organizing after a disturbance or shock. Adaptation to abrupt change is thus central.

Resilience thinking starts with a larger, “systems-thinking” approach, as the ecosystem of a city or region has a lot of interlinked, interdependent moving parts that must be recognized and coordinated in any response. As BRR member Todd Swanstrom wrote in “Regional Resilience: A Critical Examination of the Ecological Framework,” [pdf] much of the early thinking about resilience came from an ecological systems perspective. Ecosystems are designed to self-organize to achieve balance or equilibrium. If a drought wipes out a species or plants, a new desert ecosystem arises with a completely different dynamic. The resurgence springs from a system breaking down and finding a new equilibrium. This kind of resilience is spurred by constant change and adaptation, and the greater the biodiversity–the more moving parts– the greater the chance that a new equilibrium will emerge. Applied to a regional perspective, resilience thinking might inform new ways of responding to change in metro areas and regions.

But, as Swanstrom notes, “applying the framework of ecological resilience to human institutions and governance processes generates paths to greater understanding, as well as dead ends.”  The urban planners would agree.

Immediately, the urban planners in the workshops were intrigued, yet skeptical, of a resilience frame. They liked, for example, the notion of resilience as a powerful metaphor. It gave them another way of thinking about things, that in itself released them from more tried and true (rigid) ways of doing things.  Planning, the authors note, is nothing if not a framing of the problem or organizing attention to possibilities–and a resilience framework opens the door to new ways of doing that.

For those working on sustainability projects, the urban planners especially liked the ability of a resilience framework to break through the problem of adopting ’sustainability’ as a concept. As one participant noted, resilience as a frame is:

“more understandable and effective than sustainability. Substitute risk for resilience and if you articulate the risk, decision makers understand the concept, but they will not understand sustainability no matter how you define it. But if you quantify risk and resilience, it gives you the kind of approach that, plus the framework, provides quite a powerful tool.”

Resilience as a metaphor also helps to break down the urge to think linearly. It challenges the blueprint planning or the “survey-analyze-plan” tradition of thinking. Because thinking about resilience requires thinking about the entire system of moving parts at once, linear thinking doesn’t bear up well.

But resilience as a concept also comes with some problems–namely, it turns on change. And people hate change. And if people hate change, politicians hate change.  People also hate complexities and uncertainties, which are inherent in any attempt to deal with a lot of moving parts, as resilience thinking must. So within this system, the authors ask, “how do planners frame complexities and uncertainties so as to render them governable given the wicked dilemma that we must act anyway?” In effect, planners must assume change and explain stability instead of assuming stability and explaining change. Not an inviting prospect, especially when politics are in the mix–and they always are in urban planning.

Swanstrom in his paper notes a similar problem. “Power and conflict are present in regional governance in ways that are not present in ecosystems,” for example.

It’s also hard to harness the tension between strategic long-term planning and local, fluid control in an urban or regional setting, the planners noted. It’s a trick to shift from saying “this is how you should do it” to saying “here’s the outcome we want,” and then allowing local actors to figure out how to achieve it. It’s a fundamental tension between institutional stability and change, the planners noted.

Resilience, Swanstrom argues, is best served by recognizing these different spheres of influence in the public, private, and civic sectors. Each of these sectors has its own way of responding to change. Each plays a unique role in contributing to the whole. Regional resilience, Swanstrom argues, “is most effective when each sector operates according to its own principles and is not contaminated by the processes of the other sector.”

“The private sector maximizes the resilience of individuals, the civic sector of communities, and the public sector of the society as a whole. Without a balance between the three sectors, controlled ultimately by a central authority, society will either become rigid or innovation at one level will undermine resilience at other levels. In short, resilience does not require merging human systems with nature in one integrated system but requires maintaining spheres of resilience with carefully guarded borders.”

Wilkinson and coauthors conclude on a similar note–at least for the prospects of using resilience in regional planning. The concept is a mind-opening metaphor for urban planners; it offers a fresh frame for seeing solutions. But in actual implementation, the devil is in the details. As the authors write, more work is needed: “we encourage attention to the analytical and governance dimesions of resilience alongside its metaphorical power.”

• “The most standard segregation measure shows that American cities are now more integrated than they’ve been since 1910. Segregation rose dramatically with black migration to cities in the mid-twentieth century. On average, this rise has been entirely erased by integration since the 1960s
• All-white neighborhoods are effectively extinct. A half-century ago, one-fifth of America’s urban neighborhoods had exactly zero black residents. Today, African-American residents can be found in 199 out of every 200 neighborhoods nationwide. The remaining neighborhoods are mostly in remote rural areas or in cities with very little black population.
• Gentrification and immigration have made a dent in segregation. While these phenomena are clearly important in some areas, the rise of black suburbanization explains much more of the decline in segregation.
• Ghetto neighborhoods persist, but most are in decline. For every diversifying ghetto neighborhood, many more house a dwindling population of black residents.”

The authors find that cities with gains in integration were in the sun belt, which has experienced the largest population growth and has attracted large immigrant populations in recent years. They attribute these changes to government reforms, changes in racial attitudes, and the extension of credit and access to subprime mortgages.

Glaeser and Vigdor are both fellows at the Manhattan Institute which focuses on examining urban issues from a free market perspective. The paper is titled “The End of The Segregated Century” and produced such headlines as “Segregation Declines Across U.S.,” or “Blacks are less segregated than ever before” in newspapers and media outlets around the country last month.

The big pictures is, of course, much more complex than the headlines, and many would argue, not as rosy. And the important question is: If the urban segregated ghetto is on the decline, what do we find in its place?

Douglas Massey, a Princeton sociologist who wrote the seminal book “American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass” told the New York Times:  “In terms of trends in black-white segregation, we really see two trends: in metro areas with small black populations, we indeed observed sharp decreases in segregation; but in those with large black populations, the declines are much slower and at times nonexistent. Although all-white neighborhoods have largely disappeared, this is more due to the entry of Latinos and Asians into formerly all-white neighborhoods.”

In the same New York Times article, William Frey, the chief demographer at Brookings said that on average white residents still live in more segregated communities than black residents do.

“While recent modest declines in black segregation levels are welcome, the 2010 census shows that the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white,” he said. “At the same time, the average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black.” Frey also said that, importantly, segregation levels are even higher for black children showing that black and white families still live in separate worlds in terms of resources and access to programs and services.

While not all segregated minority neighborhoods are low-income, scholars like William Julius Wilson have written about the negative effects of living in segregated, poor neighborhoods — like a lack of social services or being far from jobs.

In fact, as we’ve written about on this blog, research on the shifting demographics of minority communities, immigrants included, shows that even with a move to the suburbs, these communities still sometimes face isolation and poverty.

“Suburban poverty has grown rapidly over the past two decades,” BRR Network chair Margaret Weir said in a recent Q&A on this blog. “By 2008, the number of poor people living in the suburbs of the 100 largest metropolitan areas was greater than the number of poor people in the cities. Yet, most of the nonprofit social service agencies that play a leading role in providing services to low-income residents are located in cities, not suburbs. Therefore, suburbs face a new challenge with few established organizational resources.”

Research by Weir and BRR member Sarah Reckhow finds suburban infrastructures are often ill-equipped to address the needs of more vulnerable families in the suburbs like reliable and affordable transportation, housing, job-training, and preschools. Weir is concerned that in some suburban locations this isolation can cause residents to become extremely disconnected from the rest of society making poverty deeper and less visible.

Research by Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone at Brookings concurs. They found the number of poor people in major metro suburbs grew by 53% compared to only 23% in cities. In addition to economic factors Berube and Kneebone also attribute this shift to trends like overall population growth, immigration, job decentralization, and changes in the location of affordable and subsidized housing. (See Barbara’s post on how housing vouchers are affecting areas of concentrated poverty).

Research by network member Manuel Pastor and his colleagues is helping to provide a vision for an integrated and egalitarian metro region of the future.

Pastor and his colleagues at the USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) have been studying what’s going on here in California – often looked at as a model for future demographic and social change in the rest of the country. California became the first majority minority state in the 1990s and immigrants here have been moving into what were once all black areas of the state. I blogged late last year about the growing residential proximity of African Americans and immigrants here and the finding that, despite some tensions, communities are actually more united than divided.

Pastor’s work has shown that in the 1990s metro regions with less racial segregation (along with reduced income disparities and concentrated poverty) experienced greater increases in economic growth. Pastor believes that diversity is an economic asset that can help us compete in the global marketplace.

For more read the paper he wrote, Equity is the Superior Growth Model, along with PolicyLink’s Angela Glover Blackwell and Sarah Treuhaft.

Photo by John W. Iwanski

2.14.12 |

Several recent pieces I read last week drew attention to the obstacles still facing homeowners trying to avoid foreclosure and to the challenges facing state and local governments who have limited capacity to help, even now years into the crisis.

The New York Times reported last week on the logjam in processing mortgage foreclosure cases in New York state courts. (The Woodstock Institute created a visual of this logjam.) Despite aggressive efforts to protect homeowners from foreclosure, New York state still faces an astounding 100,000 foreclosure cases, according to the Times, with thousands more expected. In another story from last year, the Times quotes LPS Applied Analytics, a real estate data firm, who finds it would take lenders 62 years at their current pace, the longest time frame in the nation, for New York state to repossess the 213,000 houses now in severe default or foreclosure.

The Times’ William Glaberson visits the State Supreme Court in Queens and finds low-income homeowners facing massive red tape, state officials struggling to untangle complex subprime mortgages, and banks’ lawyers resisting compliance with new state regulations designed to try to protect low-income homeowners and hold banks accountable.

The hearings that form the core of New York’s approach — special settlement conferences, which are required to try to modify mortgages to make them affordable — have become comic exercises slowed by endless paperwork, requests for additional information and the mysterious loss of documents.

And writing at the Atlantic Cities, Mark Bergen reports on skepticism from local policymakers about recent federal plans to allow investors to buy pools of foreclosed homes backed by the government and turn them into rental units.

Realtors and those working at housing organizations are concerned about how to ensure quality. In weak housing markets like Atlanta, for example, local planners worry that foreclosed properties bought too quickly could end up vacant again in a few years. And in places like Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, those on the ground are skeptical they can attract quality investors who can comply with city ordinances.  Some are concerned about an influx of absentee landlords, and stressed local governments lack  the capacity to oversee the large amount of properties under consideration.

“Local governments really aren’t prepared,” Dan Immergluck, an urban planning professor at the Georgia Institute of told Atlantic Cities. “The problem is that you give them these resources, but they don’t have the staff.”

BRR Research has been examining how regions are recovering from the collapse of the housing market. In a series of case studies that examined the responses of six different metro regions, Todd Swanstrom and colleagues found that local community resilience was important in how well a region was able to recover from the collapse.

The most resilient metropolitan areas had strong housing nonprofits and a history of collaboration across economic sectors.

“Resilience arises from the capacity of public, private, and nonprofit entities to collaborate effectively,” Swanstrom said in a recent Q&A at HUD. “It is very important to have strong housing nonprofits that are in touch with each other, governments, and other private entities, and so are better able to influence local housing policy.”

In a forthcoming chapter, “Resilience in the Face of Foreclosures: How National Actors Shape Local Responses,” Swanstrom argues that while local government has the neighborhood expertise to more effectively respond to the foreclosure crisis, they need federal support. Swanstrom calls for more federal funds so metros can pursue their own targeted recovery strategies and build the capacity of local governments to take advantage of these federal dollars. I blogged about this research here.

The chapter was recently published in Regional Resilience:  Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects, vol. 4., edited by Harold Wolman, Margaret Weir, and Howard Wial from the Brookings Institution Press.

Photo by get directly down.

It makes sense to have fire engines nearby so they can get to the first fast, but the dispatcher? That’s what community leaders in three Ohio cities wondered when they asked the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University to do a feasibility study on combing services.

Their hunch was right. According to the study, by consolidating police, EMS, and fire dispatch services, Ashland, Wooster, and Wayne County could collectively save upwards of $330,000 a year, or about 34% if they banded together and had one central dispatch team instead of three.

In an exhaustive feasibility study, Levin College’s Center for Public Management concluded that a consolidation would be legally implementable and could provide service that was equal to or better than current service.

“This [report] is written to allow the involved entities to begin the development of the new model for emergency dispatching services for Wayne County and the City of Ashland,” said Wooster Mayor Robert Breneman, Director of Administration Robert Fowler, Fire Chief Robert Eyler, and Police Chief Matthew Fisher in a press release joint statement.

Wayne County and the cities of Ashland and Wooster lie between Cleveland and Columbus. Ashland, population 20,362, is the county seat of Ashland County. It has its own police and fire departments, although Ashland County’s sheriff’s department dispatches for them. Wooster, population 26,119, is in Wayne County and has both a fire and police department. Dispatch services are provided by Wayne County’s communication center in Wooster. Wayne County spans 555 square miles and has a population of 114,520. In addition to dispatch services for Wooster, Wayne County also dispatches for seven other villages and towns. It also dispatches emergency medical services for Wooster, and several townships. Additional details are provided in the report.

The researchers considered three scenarios with different combinations of towns and municipalities.

In the first scenario, which includes Ashland, Wooster, and Wayne County and the municipalities it dispatches for), the estimated savings in dispatch costs per year would be:

• • $122,581 for the city of Ashland per year, or a 29% savings over costs in 2010.
  • $203,662 for Wooster, or 36% over 2010 costs.
  • $201,562 for Wayne County, or a 36% savings.

The savings depends on the buy-in and contribution of the 15 other municipalities in the area that currently do not pay for dispatch service. In the above scenario, these entities will collectively pay approximately $191,000.

Savings in the other three scenarios were equally impressive.

The new report is one of three completed recently by CPM in response to government officials seeking ways to provide comprehensive services while saving public dollars.

All three reports are online:

Consolidated Dispatch Center Feasibility Study (Prepared for the city of Wooster, city of Ashland, and Wayne County Ohio, October, 2011)

Consolidated Dispatch Center Feasibility Study: Ohio Case Studies (Prepared for the city of Wooster, city of Ashland, and Wayne County Ohio, October, 2011)

Case Studies for Consolidated Public Safety Dispatch Center Feasibility Study: The Next Steps (Prepared for the city of Parma, OH, August, 2011)

The team is available to conduct similar research for other municipalities. Contact Dalia Shimek at 216-687-9221, or d.shimek@csuohio.edu.

Problems of poverty, unemployment and foreclosure, typically associated with inner cities, have made their way to distressed, older suburbs across the country. “Revitalizing Distressed Older Suburbs,” provides a detailed portrait of the underlying forces shaping distressed suburbs and highlight a range of best practices they can use to improve living conditions, restore municipal budgets, and bolster housing stock.

The report focuses on predominantly minority suburbs of older, large industrial cities, communities that once thrived but now have increasing needs and limited resources. The report identifies 168 most-distressed suburbs in the United States and provides in-depth case studies of four: East Cleveland, OH, and Inkster, MI located in declining economic regions, and Chester, PA, and Prichard, AL, located in growing economic regions.

East Cleveland, for example, was once one of the most prestigious suburbs of Cleveland. Today, most of its tax-generating industries are gone; large pockets of housing stock are substandard, abandoned, and vandalized; and the school system earns a low grade in the state ranking system. Of its nearly 18,000 residents, 37% had incomes below the federal poverty level in 2010.

One of the biggest problems is fiscal. Most of these case study suburbs are scraping bottom in their local budgets.

“Chester, for example, has a huge hole to dig out of, with an unfunded OPEB liability of $114 million and an unfunded pension liability of about $27 million. East Cleveland has an unfunded liability payable to the state pension system of about $1.4 million a year for the next 25 years. Inkster’s pension system is more than adequately funded, but it has an unfunded OPEB liability of $27.8 million. And Prichard has an estimated $17 million unfunded pension liability, but this estimate was generated in 2003 and has not been updated, so it’s possible the number is much larger. There is no evidence Prichard has even estimated its unfunded OPEB to date.”

The authors first recommendation for these distressed suburbs is to “regionalize, repurpose, and restructure.”

“Even if these cities, and others like them across the country, did everything right, they would still be in precarious fiscal situations. We recommend deep changes—regionalizing, repurposing, and/or restructuring.”

Regionalizing services and government is key to short-term advances, especially fiscally, the authors note. Regional service delivery, regional government, annexation, and restructuring city government are all on the table. This may mean that some of municipalities, the authors note, “will no longer exist in the same form they do today.”

East Cleveland offers the clearest example of the benefits of regional cooperation, especially when it comes to delivering city services, like water, police, and other vital supports.

“Despite the well-documented political barriers to regional collaboration, East Cleveland has entered into service agreements with other entities. One example is the 2008 agreement for the city of Cleveland to take over East Cleveland’s water department. In another example, East Cleveland leaders are working with neighboring communities and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District to reopen discussions about developing a watershed planning project.

Mayor Norton is openly seeking regional solutions for city services such as fire services, police services, and garbage collection. He recently reached an agreement that provides for the county engineer to take over maintenance and repair of the city’s sanitary sewers. He is pursuing the purchase of firefighting and garbage collection services from the city of Cleveland.

East Cleveland has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the newly formed Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corporation, informally known as the Cuyahoga County land bank. This agreement will provide East Cleveland with a credible system to improve its housing stock and infrastructure and to create the right opportunities and atmosphere for economic development. The land bank could be a boon for East Cleveland and other inner-ring suburbs struggling with surplus, vacant, and largely abandoned property.”

The federal role: build capacity. Officials in all four cities also recommended ways to make HUD programs more effective, including allowing cities greater flexibility to spend HUD dollars in ways that meet their most pressing needs and support economic development projects. The authors agree with these recommendations, but argue that they don’t go far enough. They need more radical intervention. Here again, the suburbs need to regionalize, repurpose, or restructure—or some combination of the three.

“These suburbs need to build their capacities to accomplish significant structural change.” While the federal government has a traditionally limited role in municipalities (they’re products of the state), it can help build capacity in several ways:

• Partner with states on behalf of distressed suburbs to provide additional block grant dollars, loan guarantees, and debt reduction that can be used as incentives for cities that meet “good government” criteria. This money could be targeted to initiatives that will increase the cities’ tax bases and regionalize or restructure services, beginning with public safety.  This could include, for example, ensuring that adequate and ongoing public safety will be provided in any federally supported development project.
• Provide technical assistance to suburbs and small cities on municipal management practices. Before distressed suburbs can discuss partnerships or agreements with other city or county governments, they need to get their own houses in order.
• Develop model legislation for states on reasonable ways to restructure city operations and finances.
• Protect the federal government’s historic investment in these communities.
• Create cross-agency partnerships—for example, with public health providers or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—that provide leverage points and opportunities for federal/state/local funds.

The report is a valuable read for urban planners everywhere. As demographic and economic pressures continue to reshape the suburbs, leaders must be prepared for significant change. This report can give them a peek into what might be around the corner–and how to respond. For those already in the throes of change, this report can help spur cooperation, build trust, and reshape the future of the community.

The study was conducted by the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University in conjunction with the Urban Institute’s “What Works” collaborative.

2.1.12 |

“We’ve got crumbling roads and bridges; a power grid that wastes too much energy; an incomplete high-speed broadband network that prevents a small business owner in rural America from selling her products all over the world,” he said.”… There’s never been a better time to build.”

Yet the transportation bill being proposed by house Republicans is drawing criticism for being “a return to 1950s-style transportation policy” for drawing resources away from transit, environmental protection and toward highway spending and big oil.

In a podcast at the Brookings Institution, senior fellow Robert Puentes says that infrastructure projects can be economic drivers, but only if done strategically. To move to the next economy that is “rich in exports, powered by low-carbon and rich with innovation,” Puentes says projects need to focus on things like port modernization, advanced telecommunications or transit. And importantly, policymakers need to think systemically.

Infrastructure projects have  “always been something that’s been siloed,” Puentes says, “and not connected to some of these issues around the economy which focus on jobs, which focus on some of the fiscal health of state and metropolitan areas.”

A new research initiative at the Urban Institute, led by transportation scholar Sandra Rosenbloom, aims to change that.

Their newly launched “Infrastructure Initiative” will build on their existing research in areas of urban development, public service delivery, jobs, taxes, and budgeting to understand how these issues intersect and to provide guidance to policymakers on targeting infrastructure projects going forward.

According to a press release the new initiative aims to “inform the public and government officials about the high-stakes choices in developing, operating, maintaining, and financing transportation networks, water and sewer systems, wireless and broadband communications, and the electrical grid.”

This new research is part of the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, directed by BRR Network Member Rolf Pendall.

“The Institute already has deep expertise in several intersecting domains,” Pendall said. “This means we can go well beyond a single infrastructure project’s technical or engineering issues to answering systemic questions about cost, equity, economic and environmental impact, and risks.”

The initiative will examine alternative infrastructure investments, and evaluate demand management schemes, financing and operations, and public-private partnership models to provide practical advice to policymakers on what works.

Fuentes says successful infrastructure plans need to be targeted, think long-term about how to create jobs and investments where they matter, such as in green technology, or mass transit for sustainable growth.

Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program director Bruce Katz along with Judith Rodin highlighted work in Michigan in their series about state and local innovations. Michigan’s Gov. Rick Synder has proposed a state infrastructure plan that targets key projects that will support economic growth in the years ahead, with the vision of Michigan as “a global trade center and logistics hub.” One example is the development of the New International Trade Crossing that links Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.

At BRR, Pendall heads up a team of researchers who are examining the governance of housing, transportation, and water systems in fast-growing metros .

By contrasting metropolitan areas with similar challenges (industrial restructuring, immigration, foreclosure, fast growth, and economic inequality), the researchers are building evidence about how decision-makers in metropolitan areas help their regions succeed in the face of short-term shocks and long-term stresses.

Photo by Office of Governor Patrick.

As Greg Kaufmann wrote at The Nation blog this week, “six initiatives in the Recovery Act kept nearly 7 million Americans from falling into poverty. Saying we failed simply because there is still poverty is like saying clean air and clean water laws failed because there is still pollution.”

One of the opportunities for further change Kaufmann points to from the recent stimulus bill is the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), which provided $1.5 billion in stimulus dollars to try to curb the expected rise in homelessness advocates predicted from this recession.  Instead of focusing on shelter beds and managing the homeless problem, HPRP focuses on prevention and on helping people who do become homeless find another place to live as quickly as possible. This means the federal dollars are providing support for things like rent, utilities, helping resolve disputes with landords or roommates, or helping people find a new apartment.

And new evidence from the National Alliance to End Homelessness this week shows it’s working.  Their new report, The State of Homelessness in America 2012, takes a look at the homeless population during the economic downturn from 2009 to 2011 and actually finds a decrease of 1% during this time period. And this is despite the poor economy, rising unemployment, and lack of affordable housing in many places.

But we are far from out of the woods.

The research also finds a rise in key economic factors that are often associated with homelessness like unemployment, housing costs and average real income for poor workers, all of which rose between 2009 and 2011.

Additionally, the report found that the number of poor people who pay more than half of their monthly income on rent went up by 6% from 5.9 million in 2009 to 6.2 million in 2010. Three quarters of all poor renter households experienced these “severe housing cost burdens” as HUD calls them.

We wrote about this problem on this blog last year when we covered a report by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies about the growing number of renters facing housing cost burdens. The report showed that more than one in four renters in 2010 were paying more than half of their income to rent and utilities, an all-time high.

Despite how much we already know about this recession, I still found their findings about economic indicators over the past few years sobering:

• The number of unemployed people increased by 4 percent from 14.3 million in 2009 to 14.8 million in 2010. The unemployed population increased in 32 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Unemployment rose by 10 percent or more in 11 states.
• The average real income of working poor people increased by less than one percent, from about $9,300 in 2009 to about $9,400 in 2010. There was not a single county in the nation where a family with an average annual income of $9,400 could afford fair market rent for a one-bedroom unit.
• Foreclosure activity continued to increase with nearly 50,000 more homes in foreclosure in 2010 than in 2009. Foreclosures increased from 2.83 million units in 2009 to 2.88 million units in 2010, a 2% increase. Nationally, 1 out of every 45 housing units was in foreclosure in 2010. In Nevada, 1 out of every 11 housing units had a foreclosure.

In a blog post at the National Alliance to End Homelessness Catherine An explains the effect this has on families -

[A]s housing costs eat up a larger and larger percentage of a household’s monthly income, there comes a point where housing itself becomes prohibitively expensive. Moreover, when housing consumes such an overwhelming portion of household income, there is very little left for other necessities: food, transportation, education, etc. Because of this, any unplanned financial obligation – a medical emergency, an unexpected bill, etc. – could jeopardize a household’s housing situation.

BRR Network research on the effects of precarious housing on vulnerable individuals like minorities, immigrants, older Americans, the disabled, or the poor underscores this problem. Network member Rolf Pendall, along with Brett Theodos, and Kaitlin Franks, find in their BRR working paper, “Vulnerable People in Precarious Housing,” that the most vulnerable individuals are more likely than the average person to live in precarious housing and to pay a much greater portion of their income for housing.

But as the middle class continues to shrink, there are more and more of us who will end up in this group. An points to this AP story about new census numbers showing that nearly half (48%) of all Americans can now be classified as poor or low-income.

“This situation is alarmingly real for a significant and growing number of American households,” An continues. “As more and more families struggle with their economic needs and obligations, their risk of homelessness grows.”

The report also finds an increase in the number of people “doubling up” with other family members or friends for economic reasons. This population increased by 13% from 6 million in 2009 to 6.8 million in 2010. And notably the researchers found this “doubled up” population increased by more than 50% from 2005 to 2010, which also adds to the picture of how families are surviving in this ever-tightening housing market.

More support will be needed as federal funds dry up. HPRP has already run out in many communities and the program will end entirely in the fall.

And the new federal supports to help homeowners that President Obama announced this week don’t go nearly far enough – homeowners must be current on their mortgages in order to qualify for refinancing their mortgage at lower rates, so the most vulnerable will not qualify at all.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness report concludes with a roadmap for ending homelessness that includes continued support for the prevention programs that have been successful despite the poor economy and most importantly “addressing the debt and deficit crises to prioritize needs of the most vulnerable.”

Researchers predict that without further intervention homelessness will rise in the years to come.  In fact, they are already seeing indication of that in the time since the data was collected last year.

It’s up to all of us to insist that the progress the federal money has made in homeless prevention does not disappear.

But Geroge Erickcek, a senior regional analyst at the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, says that might be a little too hasty. While benchmarks are necessary, they come with some common pitfalls.  In an article in January’s “Employment Research” newsletter, Erickcek walks readers through some of those pitfalls–as well as ways to avoid them.

The pitfalls are no doubt familiar to anyone who has worked at regional economic development: Don’t rely on stand-alone dashboards as a marker of progress; don’t go overboard with the number of indicators or progress; manage expectations, and others. But Erickcek’s concise article offers some valuable insights.

More broadly, Network members Bill Barnes and Kathryn Foster write about regional development goals in their new paper, “Regional Problem-Solving: A Fresh Look at What It Takes.” [pdf])

Among the five pitfalls, this one likely elicits the “aha moment.”

In the immortal words of Mies Van Der Rohe, less is more: Too often, Erickcek says, groups try to track too many things, getting lost in the fog as a result. “Tracking more data does not necessarily generate more clarity,” he notes.

Ultimately, information overload can be paralyzing. The dashboard, he says, should look like the dashboard in a car, not an airplane cockpit. (There are statistical methods that can weed out extraneous indicators.)

This one also likely rings a bell. Manage Expectations:  Don’t expect to move the needle on such immovable boulders like “increase per capita income.” That’s not in the realm of regional economic development teams. National policies, industrial factors outside the influence of local organizations, and demographic shifts are what affect per capita income. A better route, he says, is to start small. Create strategies that “address the factors associated with the performance indicators, such as create a small business assistance program, or design customized training programs for area employers.”

After all, he notes, economic development groups can’t control the weather; they can’t demand that local firms add more jobs or workplace training. They can only tend the soil and water the plants.

“One of the greates fears I have is that an outstanding economic development program that is cost-effective and generates postive results could be terminated because it did not do the impoossible: make a noticeable bump in the area’s per capita income or employment statistiscs,” Erickcek writes.

He offers many other insights and tips, including how to avoid fixating on one indicator and mistaking output or inputs for outcomes. It’s worth a read.

And for more in-depth treatment, Erickcek also has written extensively about the topic in these publications:

• “Development of a REgional Economic Dashboard [pdf] (with Randall Eberts and Jack Kleinhenz, W.E. Upjohn, 2006)
• Social and Economic Indicators Typifying the Community’s Health (with Bridget Timmeney et al., W.E. Upjohn, 2009)
• Economic Dashboard Supplemental Report: Other Social and Economic Indicators [pdf] (W.E. Upjohn, 2007)

In a series of posts at The Atlantic Cities this week, Katz and Rodin are highlighting state and local solutions to national economic problems. Leaders at the local level, they say, recognize that future prosperity will depend not on business as usual but on creative solutions and new models of government. These leaders are focusing on job creation, building the economy, and perhaps most importantly, collaborating across public, private and nonprofit sectors.

They write:

The next economy will be fueled by innovation and advanced manufacturing, so that the U.S. can stay on the cutting edge of invention and production. It will be powered by a next-generation workforce that’s well-prepared for employment opportunities in emerging fields. This will require the United States to take the lead in the clean economy, developing the renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies necessary for a low carbon future. The next economy will also be export intensive, producing goods and services that are in demand in the global marketplace. And all this will demand a new approach to governance, predicated on public-private collaboration and cooperation.

Katz and Rodin have been posting examples of local and state-level innovations to keep an eye on for 2012. So far they’ve posted about New York, San Diego, Connecticut, and this piece about Tennessee governor Bill Haslam’s $50 million INCITE initiative. Designed to promote innovation and economic development in the state, INCITE will build on the state’s research and development assets to grow jobs.

The initiative takes a regional approach, creating nine region-specific economic development plans. Focus is on increasing the number of science and technology companies. With an enhanced technology and commercialization infrastructure, industry in the state will be able to more quickly take products to market, with support from regional business incubators that can share best practices and raise private dollars.

In Memphis, the state plans to provide $10 million to the Memphis Research Consortium, a public-private collaboration that includes the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, FedEx, Medtronic, and Memphis Bioworks Foundations. (See Barbara’s post about the development potential of eds and meds from earlier this week.)

“The efforts will help ensure that Tennessee’s regional economies are well positioned to capitalize on the breakthrough work of firms, universities, research institutions, and other actors in the innovation ecosystem,” Katz and Rodin write.

This focus on regionalism and new models of collaborative government will be very familiar to readers of this blog. BRR Network research has emphasized the importance of working across governmental sectors to make sure local metros are prepared to meet the challenges of the changing economy in the future.

Research by Hill et al. shows the most important role for government in bolstering a metro area’s resilience is to make sure a region is ready to use its legislative tools to enhance the solutions emerging from public-private coalitions. Indeed, they find that the most important catalyst to rebounding from a shock or forging a new path ahead is the industry structure and business leadership in the region.  A recent paper from Network members Bill Barnes and Kathryn Foster provides a new framework to help local planners collaborate and understand their region’s capacity to work on a regional scale.  Similarly, in research on the Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita, Network Member Amy Liu finds a new model of civic and cross-sector partnerships with leadership from philanthropy, the private sector, and government. Liu sees these collaborations as “critical signs of resilience and adaptation.”

Katz and Rodin say these are all models that could be replicated and “scaled up by federal action.”

In the fall I spoke with Mayor AC Wharton, Jr., of Memphis about the collaborative work going on there and how these efforts have been helpful in Memphis’ local economic development efforts. The Mayor recently pledged 2012 would be a “new era of collaboration” in city government. The Mayor told me cities can learn a lot from each other’s innovations:

“There’s nothing really unique in any city,” he said. “What we went through today Cleveland went through a year ago.”

Memphis was chosen last year to participate in the new federal Strong Cities Strong Communities program, an effort to bring support to municipal governments to help them prepare for future economic changes and take better advantage of the federal resources they have at their disposal. One of the initiative’s key goals is to help local leaders further develop partnerships with municipal and state governments, nonprofits, foundations, and the business community to further local economic development.

Mayor Wharton says the new support has already been crucial in several key development initiatives in the city, including the sale of a steam ship from the federal Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration to bring needed dollars and jobs to the Mississippi riverfront. The Mayor describes creating close and productive working relationships between federal and local officials who are getting things done much more quickly, whether sharing information about the city’s post-flood infrastructure to the e-approval process for women and minority owned small businesses.

You can read the full series on Innovative State and City Government Solutions to Watch in 2012 at Atlantic Cities.

Photo by Matt Lancashire.

As one former employee put it, “We felt we were working with the most capable people in the world. And then it all sort of crumbled.”

Yet this is not the typical story of decline.

While the demise of Kodak has challenged Rochester, it also had planted the seeds of new growth. As Applebome reports, the slow fading of Kodak, rather than a sudden decline, allowed people to see the writing on the wall and use their skills learned at Kodak to form new companies in new industries. Medical technology, photonics, imaging and optics business have sprung up in Kodak’s wake.

In addition, the R&D community has shifted to the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology (both of which were started by Kodak’s founder George Eastman himself). Kodak also left behind an industrial infrastructure that is being repurposed for smaller start-ups. Thirty-five businesses now occupy the industrial park, along with the remaining employees at Kodak.  As a result, Rochester metro area is a jobs producer. As Applebome reports, in 1980 the Rochester metro area employed 414,400 people. In 2010, it employed 503,200.

Rochester, it would seem, was quite resilient in the face of adversity. In fact, Rochester ranks fairly high on BRR’s Resilience Capacity index, which measures how resilient a region is to these kinds of shocks. Among the 362 metro areas in the index, Rochester ranks 62 on overall resilience capacity. Its economic diversification, highly educated and economically secure population, and metro stability are propelling that higher ranking. Therefore, when faced with a slow hemorrhaging of jobs and livelihoods, Rochester looked outward to its inherent skills and strengths and is gradually refashioning an economy built in many respects on a “cluster” model.

A recent report by the U.S. Department of Commerce speaks to the importance of “clusters” of expertise and talent like those in Rochester in spurring innovation and development. The report, “U.S. Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity,” [pdf], outlines several strategies to make the United States more competitive in a global economy. Chapter 7 calls for the development of more regional clusters–or “innovation ecosystems” as they put it, to spur innovation.

These innovation ecosystems are made up of “communities of people with different types of expertise and skill sets. Scientists, administrators, business leaders, engineers, writers, educators, health care professionals and other individuals all play a role.” The business that these groups create are interconnected, concentrated in a geographic region, with a web of suppliers, service providers, and R&D facilities all nearby and all contributing expertise and talent to the cluster. These firms develop close relationships and access to ideas and information. Firms in clusters can more easily find workers and suppliers with the right kinds of skills and products. In other words, clusters create efficiencies and creativity, and spark wider development.

Indeed, as the report notes, studies have found that a doubling in employment concentration in a particular industry–which clusters promote–is associated with a 2% increase in local wages. Another study found that wages in industry clusters were 6% higher than for workers in the same industry but beyond a cluster. Productivity also increases–up to 12% one report found. And like in Rochester, clusters are more likely to spin off businesses.

One factor that the articles only allude to is the regional nature of this approach. The related businesses often do not all sit in the same industrial park. They are located in a broad area, sometimes crossing state borders (as in the Great Lakes region) and certainly often spilling over metro borders.  To truly harness the potential of these regional clusters, local governments and municipalities must learn to work together to spark continued innovation –or at the least to not impede it.