فیلم تجدید قابل قبول و رشد شامل در شهرهای استادی سال ۲۰۱۹ فروموم Burnham

Title:Equitable Redevelopment and Inclusive Growth in Legacy Cities | 2019 Burnham Forum

انجمن دانیل برنهام ۲۰۱۹ درباره ایده های بزرگ، که با مشارکت موسسه سیاست زمین لینکلن ارائه شد، بر چالش های متمایز توسعه مجدد پیش روی شهرهای قدیمی تمرکز دارد. از آکیلا واتکینز-باتلر از مرکز پیشرفت جامعه بشنوید. نماینده دن کیلدی از ناحیه ۵ میشیگان؛ و شهردار دانیل هوریگان از شهر آکرون، اوهایو. این سیاست‌گذاران پیشرو محلی و فدرال، آزمایش‌های شهرهای قدیمی را با سیاست‌های نوآورانه بررسی می‌کنند – سیاست‌هایی که بر مدیریت زوال تمرکز ندارند، بلکه بر پیشبرد مسکن، حمل‌ونقل، نیروی کار، و توسعه جامعه تمرکز می‌کنند و فرصت‌های جدیدی برای ایجاد جوامع قوی‌تر و پایدارتر ایجاد می‌کنند. اعضای هیئت توضیح می‌دهند که چگونه این تلاش‌ها توسط ارزش‌های رشد عادلانه و فراگیر هدایت می‌شوند و چگونه استراتژی‌های برابری به عنوان بخشی از یک رویکرد جامع توسعه و اجرا می‌شوند. آنها همچنین شناسایی می کنند که چگونه تجربیات و تجربیات شهرهای قدیمی می تواند در جوامع دیگر به کار رود. برای دریافت اعتبار CM برای تماشای این بحث، بازدید کنید https://learn.planning.org/local/catalog/view/product.php?productid=587. بیشتر بدانید: https://planning.org/burnham/ (برچسب‌ها ترجمه) انجمن برنهام

قسمتی از متن فیلم: Good afternoon and welcome to the 2019 Daniel Burnham for no I am Kirk Christiansen ap A’s president and it’s an honor to here to welcome you to this special event the Burnham forum was designed with two ideas in mind one what are the big ideas the planners need to be

Thinking about discussing and debating and two what are the important issues and trends that are likely to drive change in disruption this forum has sought to raise the big ideas and important emerging issues that hold the potential to change the communities that we serve as an organization APA leaders

Have been thinking a lot in the past weekend about foresight today’s event as part of that work to help us grapple with big ideas and change in the communities we have a very distinct and exciting panel of leaders these experts will be discussing an issue that is of

Such great importance to planning to people into this country how can we achieve equitable redevelopment and inclusive growth in our legacy cities now as some some of you might not be familiar with the word legacy cities and and these are places across the country largely in the Northeast and Midwest but

Can experience anywhere really that are experiencing significant demographic and economic transitions these places find themselves in a mostly post-industrial economy and dealing with either slow growth or no growth the question of how to create prosperity and opportunity in these communities is critically important and the specific housing transportation infrastructure and

Development questions are difficult equally important in the discussion is how to improve communities in ways that advance social equity and make opportunity accessible for everyone these are important values for planners and at the very heart of a piays work on equity diversity and inclusion the folks

With us tonight on the stage are not only grappling with these questions but are also achieving real results in their communities they are changing both the policies and the larger narrative of legged legacy cities to make these communities stronger and opportunity rich places we are so honored to have with us akela Watkins

Butler the CEO of centers for community progress the center has been a critical voice and thought leader on the issues confronting legacy cities particularly vacant properties she had a distinguished career working on neighborhood issues and community development issues prior to joining a community progress akela was associate

Director of community change she led the national anti-poverty and place-based portfolio at the Center for the Study of Social Policy she served as director of national partnerships at NeighborWorks America there she implanted implemented a national public health and housing initiative for over 4,000 low to moderate income families and communities

She also served as deputy director of leadership for health healthy communities at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation tonight akela will be host for conversation with two elected leaders who have been at the forefront of addressing the needs of these types of communities we are pleased to welcome congressman dan Kildee from Michigan and

Mayor and the mayor of Akron Ohio Daniel Horgan [Applause] before I turn the probe over to Aquila I want to acknowledge and think the Lincoln aunt went Lincoln Institute of land policy Lincoln has been our partner on the Burnham Forum in recent years as well as a partner on a range of critical

Issues this year we are extending our work with with Lincoln Lincoln to include a full track of sessions tomorrow aimed at identifying ideas for legacy city agendas we are grateful for their support at this event now I’d like to turn the stage over tonight’s host aquila Watkins Butler thank you all for

That warm welcome so I’m excited to be hosting you this evening to talk about big ideas and I have a fabulous panel to do that I am happy to be joined by congressman dan Kildee and Mayor Dan Horrigan and so before I turn it over and have these two gentlemen come up and

Share about some innovative ideas that they’re both working on as it relates to community revitalization I would like to share with you a little bit about what the Center for Community progress is doing so let’s see all right there we go all right so the Center for Community

Progress really quickly and let me just say that I have to give props to congressman dan Kildee he is the founder of the Center for Community progress so it’s like I’m doing a presentation for my professor so hopefully I do well by him the Center for Community progress is

The only national organization solely focused on combating vacancy abandonment and deterioration across the country we have worked in over 300 communities mostly with local government helping them to fight and combat blight and also to reimagine what a new community could look like with the current context in

Which that new community exists in we do this a variety of ways right so we do this through providing very deep nuanced technical assistance to local leaders so that’s everything from coming in and doing research and development many cities have no idea how many vacant and abandoned properties they have all the

Way to introducing local ordinances and local policies that can be implemented both at a state and local level the other thing too is we provide a whole suite of leadership and educational programs all the way from monthly webinars to our national conference that will be taking place in Atlanta Georgia

In less than a week so for all of you here that are interested in learning more about community revitalization efforts I encourage you all to go to go to reclaiming vacant properties dot-com and learn all about our work and visit us because we will be in Atlanta in a

Week so a little bit about the challenges that we face as it relates to vacancy one is that we face a history of redlining and housing discrimination that have left many people especially black and brown people outside of the realm of finding adequate housing we all know that most Americans store most of

Their wealth and housing and for many African Americans a lot in Latin ex families that opportunity to build intergenerational wealth was was lost and taken away from them and so our work at the Center for Community progress is really about it it’s really reparative in a lot of ways it’s really about how

Do we look at the historical housing redlining rate housing policies that have historically kept black and brown families outside of the realm of developing wealth and how do we how do we change those policies in a way to be more inclusive the other challenge we have and this is pretty much a newer

Challenge but one that is pretty relevant today especially in light of what’s happening in DC is this whole idea of climate change we have more and more communities especially our coastal communities that are being deeply impacted by by higher climate more order more storms and those cities are being inundated with vacant properties

In the way that they they weren’t in the past and so our work is being our organization is being called on more and more to work with cities to figure out what does a resiliency plan look like and then poverty you’re gonna see from some of the slides that I show you today

That poverty is still the number one issue as it relates to finding adequate housing that in some ways building a stronger field that of Hauser’s right that believe in affordable housing for all will be met with with a lot of challenges if we don’t figure out this income inequality in this country right

So we need both so this is a bit a chart to show you I I have the privilege of working with mr. Allen Malik for those of you who do not know he is part of my brain trust at the Center for Community progress and what we want to show with

This chart if you look at the blue line is that we are seeing vacancy and blight still rising in many communities especially a lot of the legacy communities that we’re talking about today that while our national conversation has shifted a bit from vacancy and abandonment to displacement

We are seeing huge amounts of vacancy rise in our in our communities and so the blue line illustrates all vacancy so not just vacancy due to homes you know renters or home sales or vacation rentals as in the red line but the blue line encompasses all vacancies and

That’s the number that I’m asking people to really focus on because that really tells you the health of a community and so this is a national chart just outlying outlining where vacancy has become a huge issue and we’re looking at a data point of 10 percent and above and

So what we’re seeing is that vacancy is not just an urban issue that it is taking place in the south in the Midwest in the plains states so this is an issue being faced by many City in America that’s not getting the attention that it deserves this is

Zeroing in even further looking at Baltimore and so what we find in Baltimore three different times 1991 2000 and 2010 and what we’re finding is more concentration of vacant and abandoned properties and what we are what we are attributing that to is the fact that income inequality is growing

That while Baltimore as an example is receiving an influx of more wealthier white residents what we are seeing is that income is not being evenly distributed that for African Americans especially in the city of Baltimore they are being concentrated more and more in places around the city that are

Experiencing high levels of vacancy and so this is just a chart to illustrate that even more the Arman’s line outlines the population of African Americans and the two lines at the bottom represent both vacancy and poverty and so we see that as a community is more african-american right so more

African-americans move into a community we are seeing higher levels of poverty and higher levels of vacancy take place so what do we do about this what’s our bold idea and so because of leaders like congressman dan Kildee we are looking at what we call a land bank right so this

Was the community revitalization tool that was created in Genesee County more than 10 years ago that tool was created as a repository for land for local government to be able to recapture vacant and abandoned land and be able to transform that land into into productive

Use for for the best and highest use of the community and so more than ten years ago there were only a handful of land banks and today we have over a hundred and seventy of them so this is a that has grown the Center for Community progress has been the vanguard for this

For this movement growing there are more than 15 states that have land banks and for some of for some of you out there I think it’s really interesting some of the states that have adopted and really grown this as a revitalization strategy and that is New York Ohio Michigan and

The state of Georgia we don’t normally think about the southeast as a place where where this happens but we are seeing more and more land banks develop in places that are facing uneven revitalization and so we are excited about this tool we’re looking to build on the legacy of congressman dan Kildee

And grow this tool even more so I’m excited about that and I’m also excited to introduce congressman dan Kildee to share his big idea so thank you all [Applause] thank you so much Aquila for that introduction and for this opportunity and for the work you’re doing it really

Felt like coming home that land banks lied I I founded the Genesee County Land Bank back in 2002 and worked to bring it to life and then when we formed the Center for Community progress just 10 years ago right now that was really a central centerpiece of our work to try

To take that notion nationwide and it’s one of the pieces while not historically associated with the federal role that we’re working on as part of a big approach to support these legacy cities those communities and the people who live in them that even during periods of economic expansion seem to be immune

From the growth that comes from a growing economy structurally locked out of really what we’ve seen in the last few decades two periods of sustained economic growth the period of the nineteen 90’s in the period that we’re in right now both are remarkable in the sense that there were communities that if you

Went and visited them and I sure did as a part of my work and I know akela does every single day as a part of the efforts of the Center for Community progress as you visit them and talk to the people there about their experience they haven’t experienced that growth and

So it’s it’s a shame that it has to be considered a big idea but I think it’s a big idea to get the federal government back in the game back in this game so that’s really the focus let me just make a couple of comments because I want to

Hear from the other Irish politician named Daniel who’s here but a couple of things in terms of the economic development challenges or the sustainability challenges in America’s legacy cities which have taken a whole succession of euphemisms we call them older industrial cities for a while

Legacy cities my view is that we have to start with some fundamentals because it’s impossible to transactionally intervene without dealing with the incredible inequities in our economic system so to start as a baseline my view is we have to address that unfortunately from time to time we take giant steps

Backward no surprise that it’s my view that in 2017 the Congress and the nation took a giant step backward by exacerbating the economic inequalities in this country through tax legislation it gave us an opportunity to do something about inequity that Congress failed to take up and in fact went in the other direction

One way to correct that is to deal with the fact that we have tens and really hundreds of millions of people who live all over the country but are obviously concentrated in the weakest most difficult communities who live at or below the poverty line who even with the most inventive and magical economic

Development tools and incentives because of their circumstance are going to have a hard time making the transition into the economy because they’re just struggling to survive in the richest country on earth in the wake of tax decisions tax policy economic decisions that concentrated more of the vast

Wealth that we generate into the hands of the few who now represent the new 21st century Gilded Age the highest concentration of wealth in the hands of the fewest people since the Gilded Age of the early 20th century and there are things we can do to change that I have legislation to significantly

Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to significantly expand the child tax credit and make it fully refundable what would that do take a hundred and ten million people a third of the Americans in this country and give them a big raise give them a big boost built built straight out of

The very same tax code that just gave a huge raise to people who didn’t know enough to do with that money except buy back stock not invest in the productivity now it has there been growth for sure but let’s just have some real talk the people who were talking

About the people who are left behind the people are in those most distressed those places we call legacy cities are disproportionately people who struggle my hometown of Flint Michigan 40% of the people who live in my hometown live in poverty 60% of the children live in poverty you know what happened with the

Flint water crisis it wasn’t about Flint and it wasn’t about water wasn’t about Flint because it’s also about lots of other places around the country with less famous crises that have a death of a thousand dreams every single year that you never read about in the newspaper in Flint’s case we know

What it was and you can point to the problem because it was a very well known crisis it wasn’t about water it was about the fact that we have a system that leaves these folks behind and it wasn’t about Flint because it’s being experienced in

Lots of other places so the big idea is to start off by recognizing that the people and the communities that we’re talking about are in the situation they’re in not because they chose to we got to get over this idea which is very much a part of the national narrative and very much

A part of the political narrative that I know mayor’s face and that I faced when I was in local government and that is this belief that the struggles that these places are making is because they didn’t have vision or that they were poorly managed when the truth of the

Matter is with the exception of the fact there are our places that were poorly managed and there are people without vision but the reality is that most of the drivers of the struggles the experienced by the communities that we’re defining in this conversation our drivers completely beyond the control of

The people who live in those places starting with racial avoidance in the 50s 60s and 70s globalization affecting manufacturing transportation policy and funding decisions that clearly benefited suburbanization and regionalization of wealth none of those decisions were choices made by people in those communities those communities that help build the

Regions that now benefit from that economic history but don’t see that the shoe being on the other foot that there’s some obligation to help rebuild those places so the federal government has to record we all need to recognize this but the federal role has to be one that recognized

Is it and I’ll just touch on a few quickly a few ways that I think we could take immediate action one take up that or an income tax credit expansion expand the child tax credit take up Social Security 2100 which would give people who are retirees they guarantee that if

You’re on Social Security you’re not living in poverty deal with the issue which is really a fundamental question you talk about any making an economic development strategy the most significant economic development strategy for America’s most distressed communities is let’s decide that we’re going to have a guarantee

That the essentials of a civil society are the starting point for a city and there are lots of cities in this country that don’t have what we assumed to be in place everywhere and that is their the essentials of a civil society water that’s drinkable roads that are

Maintained parks that are mowed a fire department a police department on the other end of the phone when you call the basic elements of city services that we take for granted are not existent not present in a sustainable fashion at all and let’s get off the notion that

Solvency of a city is somehow the measure of its success and get off this sort of balance sheet approach and realize that there’s service level solvency questions that have to be a part of the conversation in retool and rethink this the way we finance municipal governments so that we can

Have a guarantee that the basics this fundamental elements of civil society are guaranteed this is the wealthiest country on the planet and guess what on the wealthier today in its history today more wealth is accumulated in the hands of one nation we just set a record today

And you know what we’re gonna set that same record again tomorrow the idea that we can’t have that guarantee is the big idea that we have to pursue and then ensure that when the federal government does act I mean that’s a big question I will admit but finally when the

Federal government does act on those things that we clearly have a legitimate role in and I’ll just give you two examples because I could go through many more I won’t but let’s just take two one that just happened as a part of the tax code it was a case where the federal

Government was in the right church but may have sat down in the wrong pew and that’s the opportunity’s own concept right Church reinvest in distressed places amen but however not properly targeted which it isn’t we’re not properly managed it’s not managed at all because it’s not even a

Program the result will be of course for the subscription of that to be in the places that happen to have qualifying zones with the greatest likelihood of return and the highest rate of return and it will exacerbate the differences between the haves and have-nots and then finally the big one infrastructure if we

Don’t figure this out before we go big with the trillion two trillion three trillion or four trillion dollars which sooner or later we’re going to do at the federal level to reinvest in our infrastructure and recognize that these places that are left behind not only won’t fully benefit because of the capacity constraints

There or the wave funding formulas typically work but that private capital moving as efficiently as it can to the places most likely to deploy it as fast as they can that public capital will be followed by private capital it’s naturally a magnet for private investment which will further empty out the places

Are supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries so we better get it right and we better get some focus when and this is where I’m calling on everyone in the conversation to not let a conversation about infrastructure pass without talking about the need to over invest to flood the zone in these most

Distressed places with a different approach that deals with their specific legacy issues and stop beating them up as if somehow the conditions that they are experiencing is because of a choice they made or a failure of their decision making it is not factors beyond their control how do we offset that with a

Clear minded and very focused effort to reinvest big in blight elimination big and re-engineering the infrastructure in these places that have lost half their population to get the metrics right so that it’s not only unsafe water but as the case in Flint Michigan the most expensive water in the United

States of America cuz the mists because of the mismatch between the size and form of the infrastructure and the population they’re supporting it these are big questions that are gonna require really big and bold ideas and the opportunities that have come and gone like the tax code and prey not like this

Infrastructure investment that we’re going to make can’t allowed they can’t allow those moments to pass without getting it right for these places that are being left behind in the people who live there so the big idea is the federal government needs to understand that and we need to get back in the game

Thanks thank you very much congressman Kildee and so we got our charge right and our charge is to hold government accountable and and to understand that the the role that they play and to get back into the game right to help us solve some of the local

Challenges that we’re all working on so next I would like to bring up Mayor Dan Corrigan mayor of Akron to join us with some words and to share the big idea that’s happening in Akron thank you [Applause] thank you and thank you for having me here this evening congressman I couldn’t

Agree more about getting back in the game we have we work we worked with a lot of different federal partners and coming into office let me start with this many of you may be familiar with my planning director named Jason Sega D when I first interviewed Jason before I

Even took office and I’ve been mayor for about three and a half years and previously I’d served in county government and taught high school and owned a business and did a couple other things but it’s been about 25 years in public service I told Jason I said

Listen and I’m not saying this because I’m an elected official I’m not saying this because I’ll need you to vote for me that’s not it I told Jason I said the Planning Department needs to become a verb again it needs to start doing some of those things that we had done

Historically of planning for the future and he said you know what I couldn’t agree more and I said listen just go do big ideas just go think of big things let’s get some stuff fixed kind of right away in coming in office I thought to myself you know not not not being the

Mayor before and being in another section the government I said you know what I’m kind of kind of need an assessment of what’s going on because we had had a previous mayor there’d been Heather for about 28 years which is a signal which is which is a long time

Which is probably a little bit too long it’s not a criticism on him I think just just needs to be some sort of turnover in that political realm at some point whether it’s 12 or 16 years at that point you need to bring in some fresh

Ideas at some point and so I appointed a blue-ribbon task force and a commission to say listen I’m gonna give you four months go look under the hood tell me where my finances are tell me where my opportunities are where can I make some charter changes

Get some winds out of the way right away just so cuz you know it’s there’s some you have to show some success because unfortunately cities and what we have to do in those basic city services those are on the front line on a daily basis people are knocking on your door

From the time you get into the office to whenever you get home and then even during the middle of the night all of those different things it’s not a complaint it’s just what the job is and and I say this with with as much humbleness as possible you know I signed

Up for a temporary job really these are temporary positions so the goal of me and my administration and our staff is that we want to get as much done as possible but first you have to kind of figure out you know what is going on out

There in the city where are some of the opportunities and the assessment that they brought back to me especially on the financial end that said you know it’s not good you know we’ve leveraged ourselves but it’s not a criticism because we’ve built a pretty good infrastructure of some assets downtown

We acquired a ton of property thank you for the land bank because they’ve been a tremendous partner in Summit County when it comes to the acquisition of property the demolition of property holding property we started a vacant building registry when it comes to industrial property just last year start to put

Some money into a fund to take down some of those things so we’re starting to get ahead on some of that planning process but that blue ribbon panel told me and said listen there’s some you have some real vulnerabilities and a lot of them center around infrastructure and

Finances and it did not want to be the first person or a mayor that came into office and said listen I’m gonna raise your taxes right away I don’t I don’t like paying any more than I have to on that end of it – I don’t think anybody

Does but I think people will pay for things that they see and that they can feel and they can touch my dad told me a long time ago he’s kind of a wise Irish man he said listen count the pennies because the dollars will take care of

Themselves and what I took him to mean is that pay attention to details people notice potholes they notice that knocked over sign they noticed a tree that’s not picked up or the lawn that’s not mowed they notice those things they don’t notice that you completely replaced an

Interchange out on the expressway to the tune of 50 or 60 million dollars they notice some of those little things so if we were gonna get some of those little things done I thought we needed you know we did a different finance package to be able to do it

We raised a quarter percent income tax to start on our infrastructure and we used to resurface about 17 17 miles of roads a year which is not a whole lot but I promised the community that if we would raise the income tax by a quarter percent it would

Bring in an additional fifteen million dollars but I would put it towards three things only just three things because I think those are three most important things and people were telling me this over the first year and a half and this is from dozens of community meetings out

And out with either business owners or senior groups or a myriad of different groups our roads stink our police need help on our fire need help and I said listen we’re gonna put the money towards three things police fire and roads we open to new fires Jason’s just last week

We’re paving 54 miles of roads each year and we’ll do that every year because that’s the way the legislation is written and we’ll continue to in debt invest in that infrastructure I know this sounds somewhat like a political speech at some point but at some point

You have to start to show some sort of results for the things that you’re doing so as you go around and look and so in starting to office and they gave me that report some of the things that they had said they said here’s some opportunities but here’s another thing is that your

Finances are not in the best shape which which caused for the the income tax increase in I think a very nominal amount but P but it but it did pass with the 70 percent there was there were no plans for the future and this was back to the planning department and in staff

Capacity and saying what are our plans for economic development what are our plans for homelessness and inclusive and inclusivity and diversity and diversity all of those different things because there wasn’t anything to go to a shelf and pull it off and say listen this is how we’re going to address this

Particular subject this is what we’re going to do so it took a while to actually put together a plan and specifically when it comes around economic development and and I love the concept in the beginning of the opportunity zone I haven’t seen him really work yet and it’s kind of a you

Know I approach things in it I think a different way I’ve spent like I said I think the last 25 years in customer service or in public service and I think those two will kind of equate to each other is that we’ve never asked the city

And I know that we didn’t but this is we never asked our customers and our customers are our residents they are our businesses they’re anybody that we need to collaborate with whether it’s the universities or the hospitals or anybody else we never asked them a key question

And it’s a really hard question to ask and I ask high school seniors I asked my mom I asked everybody tell me what you want it’s not an easy question to answer it’s just not tell me what you want because the list of answers will be it’s

It’s almost too much to take but if you start to categorize those answers and start to put out a process and said listen you’ll find some common themes people want to live in a safe neighborhood they want to know that the city cares they want to know the city’s

Going to invest in certain things in their neighborhood how are my kids going to be able to get a job where the school what kind of school are they going to what’s the condition of the building I think people are honest with their answers and they’ll tell you exactly

What they want but it takes them a little while so to put that all down and then come up with a plan it’s only about three and a half years since I started but we have specific plans to be able address a lot of those things especially

When it comes around in around economic development and I think for a long time we as a city and I think a lot of cities did this when it comes to legacy part of it and I go back to that whole term of legacy city because a lot of times

They’ll call us the Rust Belt which there is actually a science behind corrosion rusting but I won’t get into that whole engineering part of it now but when you talk about legacy cities and I think of my dad and I think of my grandparents and I think of all the

People that worked in the rubber shops in Akron and I think that’s one of those misperceptions if you’re riding around on tires they were eventually made in Akron well the city of Akron used to build about three hundred thousand tires a day literally a day in the city and I

Remember walking out in grade school and wiping this black dust off my windshield and say boy is that boy dead that’s you know this is pollution he said no they said no that’s jobs and so we didn’t I didn’t think like that until I got a

Little bit older but you really had two and three generations of people and maybe your parents or your grandparents who went to work for one simple reason and sometimes in conditions that were not that safe working in band berries and working in chemicals this is a group

Of people that went to work for generations to make sure that their kids lives were a little bit better I don’t think you can replace that I think that’s the I think that’s the epitome of what the Midwest ethic is and it’s not a disparagement on any anyplace else in

The country but when they built these things and they built cities like Akron and then all of a sudden at some particular point we lost about a hundred thousand people from the time I was born 1962 to now we have three hundred thousand people that lived in the city

Now there’s two I don’t think it’s indicative that I was born in population started this slide but that’s neither here nor there either but our whole pop our whole strategy is about attracting more peep but if you can’t keep the people that are there and there are thousands of

University graduates from at least a dozen universities in Northeast Ohio that are leaving Northeast Ohio on a yearly basis to go somewhere else and I want to ask each one of them as an exit interview as they go out 76 or 80 or 77 where you’re going and why because we

Have customers that are leaving and they fled the Midwest for probably a solid 50 years and we have to ask them why sometimes we don’t like the answer sometimes it’s an uncomfortable conversation but if we don’t fix those things or if we don’t try to fix those things and that’s giving them those

Things that they want on a daily basis good infrastructure safe neighborhoods an opportunity for economic advancement educational advancement all those different things and that’s just accurate imagine the Boston and Austin in New York and Lansing and Flint and pickups in New York in Syracuse in Scranton Pennsylvania all of these

Cities we’re all fighting for the same people that are leaving some of these areas and flooding into other areas we have to ask that question why and if we don’t answer it they’re gonna keep leaving and I’ve implored my other mayors across the state of Ohio and

Across the region why aren’t we asking our customers why because I know I asked him why every single day we asked residents that are leaving or if they’re planning to leave or if they have a complaint where is it that you’re going what are they offering that we can’t and

You have to throw whether out because I’ll never be able to create a mountain range and I’ll never be how about have an ocean but we have a lot of things that you’ll be able to I think rally around on a daily basis we have great natural resource it’s it’s very

Economical live we have a great school system it’s safe to live you have all of those things but people are flooding to areas where it’s a lot more expensive and if you look at some of those areas where people have flooded too recently whether it’s Austin in Miami and San

Francisco and all of those different places those aren’t the lowest tax places in the country in fact they’re probably pretty high if the economic argument is that you could save a third by moving somewhere in the Midwest somewhere and we’re offering you these incentives to be able to do it and you

Still don’t do it we have to figure out some sort of it factor that they’ve already figured out and whatever that is I think it’s different for each community and that’s what we’ve been working on for the last three and a half years what is it so special about Akron

Besides that is a great place to live and I’m the mayor and all those other great things that’s the applause line I’m supposed to be a joke all of those other now you didn’t have to do that all of those other things that I think make it a great place to

Live and you can listen the Midwest and I think the country is dotted with places like that we need to get places back to we need to get people back to those places to fill them back up I mean you talk about land mean you talk about

The land bank we have all of those things in fact we have housing tax abatement you could build a new home and put property taxes in your pocket for 15 years that’s on the supply side we have other demand side strategies that help that on an individual basis when it

Comes to business and incentives but the whole process of economic development there’s kind of two games and you don’t want to be in one because you know you have to give something away and I am load to give anything away for free I don’t like it when a company says listen

We’ll come to you but you need to give us ten million dollars and I actually had a guy in New York who was willing to move his company 109 people to the city of Akron if I would write him a check for fifteen million dollars he didn’t

Get the words 15 million dollars out of his mouth before I walked out I can’t be in that one I don’t have 15 million dollars to give you but here’s what I can give you the others the flip side to that is that if we don’t take care of

The residents that are there if we don’t take care of their neighborhoods and their businesses and those local businesses that does it that is significant economic development alone by going to the small businesses with either a one-person pizza shop or a 500-person machine shop if we’re not

Knocking on their on their doors on a weekly basis and asking them what do you want to grow what are your struggles what does Workforce Development look like and you find people how do we address those things those are on a daily basis of what we’re trying to fix

You know not only not only daily but there’s there are dozens of people involved when it comes to economic development is just not the staff in the in the integrated development department it’s also engineering it’s also police it’s also customer service it’s also the service director’s office all of us are

About making that sale about our particular city wherever may be is that why does this make it a great place to live and it is because of that interaction it is because of that feel it is a it’s not the biggest talent it’s still two hundred thousand people you

Have some of the bigger city issues but there’s a lot of opportunity in places like that and I think creating that aura around a city like Akron or wherever else across the Midwest I think is going to be key over the next 10 to 20 years

But we can’t plan for the next year you know I don’t like to wake up without a plan at some particular I’m not planning one year out and I say this because you know I for a temporary job I’m not doing this one year out

We’re trying to plan for a five and 10 year plan of where’s the university’s gross where’s the business districts growth all of these different things it has to be it has to be separate from the political realm of who comes into office it has to be about what the future is

And looks like the next five to 10 years that’s why we’re able to come to things like this and talk about our city and get those best ideas I’m a data-driven person you know I’m an economist by trade I studied economics I want to make data-driven decisions where does the

Data point us to and believe me that is oxymoronic sometimes when it comes to a city government they just want to go run out and it’s okay it’s just the culture that they’ve been in maybe they want to run out of fix thing we have to plan so

We don’t have to fix it again and I’ll give you two quick stories we’re doing a massive downtown re kind of a rebuilding our downtown along Main Street with two Tiger grants over the next year and a half we have we discovered this about six months ago we still have a wood

Water line running down the Main Street in the city of Akron and I’ll repeat that we still have a wood water line listen it’s about a hundred years old and it’s not bad I mean it’s only broke twice and eventually we’re gonna have to

Take it out when we when we take up high street but the other day we also found also found a hundred and thirty six-year-old valve that was leaking that was installed in 1884 a hundred and thirty six years old it was made pretty good it was leaking a little bit and the

Guy actually asked the question should we replace in and I said you think so so when you get a chance to be able to replace some of those things I think you have to do it whether it’s you know the once in a multi-generational opportunity

To be able to dig something up to plan though but that whole five and 10-year plan is what the key is I think for our future you know going forward so I appreciate be able to make some brief comments and I look forward to answering questions on the panel thanks again

All right okay everybody can hear me I have the honor of asking these two distinguished gentlemen some questions that were on my mind so I have different questions so congressman Kildee let me start with you I’m interested in what does economic prosperity in places like Flint look like so while you are

Marinating on that mayor Corrigan I was intrigued by you talking about how Akron has lost a third of its population I’m curious to know I’m curious for you to talk about you’re planning to grow Akron but also why are they leaving Akron what are some of those answers so

Congressman Kildee well I mean we can we can talk about economic prosperity in Flint because if you’re old enough you sort of remember it in fact there was a point in time in Flint’s history it was a city that now has just a little honor under a hundred thousand people but its

Peak population in 1960 was about two hundred thousand I graduated from high school in there in 1976 in that year there were 76,000 I’m sorry seventy-nine thousand people working for General Motors 79 thousand people in a County of about four hundred thousand a city of 200,000 you know you know we thought it

Was gonna last forever we were sure we didn’t realize that that was the anomaly not what we’re dealing with now that was the anomaly the one place one company town where everyone was making as much as their father or mother and grandfather or grandmother working down the line that’s not the prosperity that

We can go back to but that was a prosperity we have to have what it looks like is a prosperity and the sounds I know what it sounds like and I know I’m gonna get hit by political opponents in this but it’s it’s shared prosperity hmm

Use the other word it also starts with an S but that’s not what it is it’s it’s shared prosperity it’s an economic system in a place it’s not just our country but our communities where it’s not equality of wealth but it’s a minimum it’s a floor a floor of decency

Below which no matter their circumstances we don’t let anybody fall and it’s an unlimited ceiling it’s an unlimited ability to innovate and create and succeed but something that feels like a basic floor of decency that is structural in our society schools that give every kid the same basic

Opportunity they want to do more and do work harder and succeed that’s great but I think that’s fundamentally what we’re struggling with right now and we can talk about these communities in look at their unique characteristics and the unique paths that took them to the place that they’re in right now but they’re

Really just different iterations of a story of an economic system that is structurally and equitable and that was really the first point that I made unless we deal with that then there is no such thing as prosperity in a place like Flint thank you

Well I could follow up on that and a ton of different ways but when in and I think I think Flint and Akron’s trajectory probably started about the same time I graduate high school in nineteen Roman – it was 81 it was a little bit after not too much but I

Think at some point when when those when that when that base of what you have started to maybe look different and started to maybe go somewhere else maybe the first tire plant was built outside the country and then you know but even post-world war ii you saw this massive

You know the united states massive presence all over the world and they which companies and say listen go be global because there’s a global marketplace you got to be able to sell tires in in China and India and South America every Ross so you built tire

Plants over there and then all of a sudden they thought well geez I can make that a little bit cheaper over there but I think that the slip side the the flip side to that of too is that when you didn’t invest at home and it’s not a

Criticism of what went wrong it’s what what happened when the system started chasing and then I think the leadership at the time thinks well we lost a thousand jobs let’s Jewish go get another well those aren’t though you can’t just go get a thousand job somewhere so I think we

Smokestack chased a lot for a long time which is which is that’s part of that economic development strategy I was talking about we still need to be in those conversations about you know how do you land in Amazon how do you land the next Pratt industries how do you do

Those things but if you if you’re not doing it if you’re not taking care of the ones that are at home if you’re not taking care of that business at state that invested in your people in your residence and provided them that opportunity whatever it may be that I

Think you lose I don’t think you have us as strong a route and so we did that for so long at some particular point we ended up here where people said listen I’m not gonna stay in Akron I have nieces and nephews that have moved away

And then I’ve come back I have friends you know they have moved away and come back they went away for you know we want to go live in a vibrant big city or we want to be able to see a show we want to be able to see all these different

Things you know we do get some you know repatriation so to speak and I asked them you know when you did move away what was just more of an opportunity I was able to do this I was able to do that and some of the you know some of

The jobs were out there that they wanted to get it has changed I think so much in the last 10 years about you know what there’s a statistic out there by 2045 50 percent of the workplace is gonna be working from home or not from some sort

Of office if we don’t start thinking about some of those things and becoming whether it’s age friendly or whether it’s millennial friendly I know people hate that term if we don’t start adapting to some of those things then I think they go find a company or a city

Where they will adapt and part of it is recognizing as as a leadership whether it’s on a municipal level where it’s on a state level reading the federal level you better be open to what these your customers want or guess what they’re gonna go live somewhere else they’re

Going to move out of the country and I think that’s kind of a or to is that obviously we don’t want them to leave it I know there’s plenty of opportunity here but if we don’t ask those customers and I keep harping on that customer or that public service

Part of it I don’t know anybody who’s ever talked like that I don’t know and no mayor ever asked me what I wanted I mean I spent seven years on City Council and I’m not talking up from that level I think of that it’s it’s a style that’s

Suited to me so if we don’t look like if we’re not looking like you know I don’t know anybody who does great customer service that has a bad business you know nobody anybody who has great customer service you can point to the bad ones and you can see how their businesses go

Down it’s a little bit like a business approach because people are leaving and they’re your customers and you don’t want them to leave you better give them what they want so that planning to grow acting strategy is actually listening to what people want and those common themes are a good educational opportunity

Economic opportunity we want a vibrant city we want to may about a live downtown we want to be able to maybe we need some newer housing we need those things we have a lot of those things that are a little bit disconnected and they’re starting to connect and I say

Once those gears start to roll then I’m just gonna get the heck out of the way because you don’t want to be in the way of that and one of the philosophies and I lived by a couple of them is really gonna lead follow or get out of the way

And and I and I subscribed to that on it almost on a daily basis so I have one more question before we open it open it up to the audience we are in an audience comprised of local government folks planners and so what role does the local government have an assisting to grow

Towns such as Flint and Akron we can talk I mean I think Kilda you outline the role that the federal government has but what role does local government have and the same with you it about a year into the about a year into my term we

Kind of figured out not that it was a great revelation but there were three primary people that people went to when it came to economic development they either went to the county government which is organized around an executive a lot like they have I think in Maryland

In New York they either went to the chamber which is not a really a great name because I think chambers of commerce are kind of an outdated model of which they look at or they went to us they said listen what’s the opportunity here we partner with Brookings over about the

Last year and co-leads stripped down our entire framework of how we approach economic development and each one of us has paths that were that will become experts in and the county kind of centers around business retention and expansion the chamber is working on diversity and inclusion in ours is workplace and place-based economic

Development strategies and there’s five five buckets and we kind of worked hand in glove or hand in you know we work together as far as a collaborative effort and then when we see an opportunity we go to economic development partners like either team neo or jobs Ohio or working with our

Federal partners to put together a package just say this is this is this is what it looks like we are the lead in this I think in in cities and counties and chambers and is in a city like Akron I don’t know of a mayor whether it’s a

Village you know constable or whatever the head official is in a village or in the biggest city in the in the country that doesn’t have a robust economic development team that does things for business because I think it’s it’s that important to do it so we put a lot of

Resources there’s a lot of planning to go to in fact we stripped down the entire department we took I took elements of planning engineering and economic development threw them all out and then created an organization called office of integrated development that has planning engineering and economic development at sit around they don’t

Just sit around I don’t mean to be oxymoronic about that I’m sorry but they meet on a daily and weekly basis to go through you know the strategies and who we’re talking to and what the ideas are and actually what the plans are for the

Next five and 10 years – we had we had too many times in Jason would attest to this that we were we were we were sitting in silos and I think that’s one of the things about government sometimes and it’s not a knock on us it’s just the

Way that it went over for the last 200 years we sat in silos and made decisions that we didn’t really necessarily look at well how does that new water line defect that housing development that we’re not going to build now because you put it in the wrong place it’s not their

Fault it’s just we’re doing some of those things and I think they were living in silos so communication and collaboration helped on our level to make the best decision so 100% agree I think one of the challenges with answering the question which is the right question to pose as

What is the what is the local official role I just want to preface it by reiterating my point that in many cases all the best intentions all the brightest leadership and committed leadership is is so constrained by the resource issue that most of the focus is on the balance sheet in institutional

Survival and so to start with what the role is I think we all have to recognize that the role can’t be executed in a solitary fashion in this subset of American cities that are the really distressed places because their focus is so much unsurvivable that it’s difficult

To focus on anything else I think the other piece of it you know is I guess maybe two elements one it is fundamentally the role of local government to provide quality public services that are important to existence in a civil society and that just sounds so simple so fundamental that it’s often

Sort of skipped providing good decent public services that are just necessary to have a functional place so we got to get that right and the municipal finance system in many places in this country is so dramatically broken that absent the will to deal with that question it’s

Hard to kind of think about anything else how do we get fundamental services the other piece of it which of course relates very much to the work that many people in this room do is to continue to organize the community around some vision as to what the next thing is or

What the future looks like what path the community is on not just manage today but continue to think about tomorrow it’s one of the reasons that I used to say that every problem is solved by a land bank because that was the only thing I was working on for a long time

But the reason I started to conceptualize and then started the Genesee County Land Bank was because we needed to take control of our of our situation in our situation there was really about managing not growth but managing significant population loss so one of the roles is to sort of be honest

About your reality and then offset that with a vision for the path that you think you’re on sometimes that means managing the process of decline and if we can decouple growth with quality not that they aren’t connected but in some places if we decide that only growing communities are communities that are

Successful then we consign a whole set of American cities to failure no matter what because they are in a period of economic or I’m sorry of population retraction you know used to be that you know in this country we had this one big period of growth you know built largely

Upon the Industrial Revolution followed by a period of retraction and it feels like the birth life and death of places where if you look at the history of the world cities have been able to grow and expand and then grow again and kind of go through a process that is more

Organic and it’s not the birth life and death it’s just like the next phase we need to be thinking about it that way and organize our land in that way and that sort of was the underpinning of the land bank let’s hold this land let’s

Treat it as an asset not as a disposable commodity and try to deploy it in a way that’s consistent with some rational plan for what this community is going to look like given the realities that we’re facing it’s a very hard thing to do but if we cling to this notion that

We’re going to only consider ourselves ourselves to have a quality community when we are in some period of acceleration of growth we’re gonna we’re gonna miss it for a lot of places really appreciate those comments they were really powerful it’s something that we experience all over the country at the

Center for Community progress which is why we really help municipal leaders think about reimagining right so how do you create a better quality of life for the residents that are there that have committed to this city for the long haul so I really appreciated both of those

Comments well I can ask these two interesting gentlemen questions all afternoon I know you didn’t come here to hear me ask some questions so I wanted to open it up to the audience and see who has questions yes any questions on Ukraine because I’m fully briefed up

Fully fully ready I’m moving over cuz I was behind behind the speaker Cortney Mercer I’m on a PA board and I’m from New Jersey and Mayor you brought up Amazon and which you know in my mind just brings up hq2 debacle that was in my opinion and I

Think that pin you know a lot of people a race to the bottom where we have states and cities competing against each other and giving up all these tax incentives heck in New Jersey we gave huge tax incentive to Panasonic to shutter one build Class A building to

Build a nice shiny new one in another town in our own state just so they wouldn’t go to North Carolina or wherever they were threatening to go to do you see any solution or foresee a future where we stop doing this realistically as long as one person is

Doing it it’s it’s unfortunate that I hate to say I’m loathe to give people anything as an incentive to do something which is the right thing and my pitch was actually different to them because I think and it goes back to a little bit of that

When you had the companies I think a lot of those companies in the Midwest that didn’t have you know when you on the industrial side you know sometimes their working conditions weren’t all that great but you had you got a group of people that went to work every day to

Make sure that their kids could have it a little bit better my thought to them would have been listen you could go to Crystal City you could go to New York you can go to all these really neat places that you’ll be able to have or you could change the scope and

Trajectory of a place for 200 years or a hundred years by going in the middle is in central Ohio you could go to Akron or you could go to Michigan and I think really make a much more significant impact when it came to the economic development part of it too I’m loathe

Like I said to give incentives to anybody to do it but as long as one person is doing it I’m almost like you know if I’m looking at that box scenario of the game scenario then I’m just up at the upper-left corner if I’m not trying to fight for those jobs and

Incentivizing at a reasonable level and it’s not all mine there are obviously other partners that incentivize those things yes I would love for that one game to end unfortunately I have to be in multiple rooms at the same time with one company who doesn’t want a thing or

Doesn’t need a thing and that we help out and with another company who’s got both hands out unfortunately that’s just the game that we have right now I’d love for it to end on some point I just don’t think it’s gonna happen sorry good question I think about that

Believe me daily okay well I’m over here hiding behind the speaker also question for either one of you I’m Eldon James in Richmond Virginia and Virginia now has enabling legislation only from a couple years ago and it was a pretty innovative minded young council member from the

City of Danville that came forward with the idea and the legislature embraced it what is what are some of the coolest things you’ve done with land banked property while you’re waiting for the cool thing to be done with the land bank property I got a run

Did you say cruelest things oh I feel so much better all of a sudden so it’s a really good question because as you saw with achelous presentation for those aren’t familiar land banks they’re these single purpose entities that acquire hold and ultimately find productive use to land the the coolest innovative

Interim uses and we sometimes call them long-term interim use is often the simplest like for example we we searched and hunted for for treatment for the land that minimized the maintenance cost finally landed on clover I mean it’s like number three in the alphabet I

Don’t know why it took us so long we kept looking for something called buffalo grass which apparently doesn’t even exist it was like it’s the snipe of urban land treatment in any event some of the coolest uses were simply allowing for the land to look like it’s intentionally in its condition because

The big problem with abandonment is this reminder and I often think about the the lens through which we need to look at this question is the lens of a four year old child standing on her porch and what does the view of that child say to that child about their own value because

At the end of it all this is always about people it’s not about land it’s about the people who occupy those places and to have that abandoned burned-out house suddenly become a field of clover for that kid it’s magical not just in defense that it gives her a place to be

A kid but because the message the subtle message that it sends is that I have some value because that it was valuable enough for somebody to make this a beautiful place just for me so that’s like the really cool stuff there are other in the Center for Community

Progress I do check your website all the time but there are all these interim uses for structures there’s um there’s an it there’s a concept called red ink studios I don’t know if you’re familiar with it but it’s a way to manage empty commercial space by allowing artists to

Occupy and use the space for the creation and display of their art until the market is ready to catch up with it so that’s another another there’s some really cool stuff I tell you every time I talk about land banks I wonder what in the hell am i doing in Congress I really

Like that that was fun I was seeing success you know we were changing people’s lives every day now I walk to work every day and somebody’s asking me about Ukraine or subpoenas or the next subject yeah I was I was going to say dan is absolutely right I’m gonna

Give you a few more examples the Atlanta Fulton County Land Bank they do a lot of cool stuff with not local nonprofits that may be going through a rough economic downturn they hold those nonprofit properties of the nonprofit’s for up to five years and they’re able to

Freeze the taxes of those nonprofits and be able to do a bit of clearing of some of the the liens and debts on those properties of the nonprofit’s right so the nonprofit’s who are you know trying to get themselves together raise the dollars or during the next recession

That do not want to lose their land because it’s it’s so beneficial for for local youths are able to Bank their property in the atlanta-fulton land bank for up to five years so that is one thing that’s been really creative another thing that we’re piloting across

The country are land banks being able to acquire property and being able to transfer those properties to Community Land Trust right so Community Land Trust are these entities that are able to build mostly in moderate and very strong market cities and provide affordable housing options for folks who may not be able to

Afford to buy a home and so being able to cut the acquisition cost almost to just a simple transaction fee and be able to transfer transfer that property to a Community Land Trust has been a huge help and it’s been able to spur economic development in really a lot of

The expensive cities that we’re seeing a lot of population growth in so there are a lot of different and then one more example with the Cuyahoga County Land Bank one of your old friends who said hello with them last week us one thing that they’re doing in Cuyahoga County is

They’re partnering with an organization called Evergreen cooperatives where they are so the Cuyahoga County Land Bank also does a bit of development too so they acquire but they also do some rehab and renovation of these homes they’re able to work with some of the employees of Evergreen cooperatives so as an

Employee of this cooperative a certain amount of your paycheck goes toward home ownership and families are connected with some of these homes and so we’re looking at families being able to buy homes owned homes in the city of Cleveland and be able to pay off those mortgages in in like five years

Right because they’ve created this pipeline of properties to be connected to individuals who may not without this opportunity to be able to buy homes and be able to qualify so there are a lot of cool things we could talk about them all day because like dan I’m really high on

Land banks and the power of them but they are becoming a lot more creative they are becoming a lot more collaborative and I think that a lot of a lot more folks around the country are looking at them as a revitalization tool if I could just hit one more thing on it

Because the question is a really good one you know it’s one that a lot of communities struggle with because the orientation of most land systems is that the land in order to be productive it has to have productivity associated with that particular parcel it has to be economically productive either taxpaying

Or contributing directly through economic activity and as an economist you’ll appreciate this the most important paradigm to accept is the you want to internalize all the externalities of the use of that piece of property and realize that very often a green fallow piece of land has the best economic and social impact without

Producing a single cent of tax revenue or economic activity because the externalities are so positive and there’s actually really good measurement I don’t know if you guys continue to work with no what’s-his-name good you know remember what’s-his-name Nigel Nigel Griswold who did a bunch of interesting economic studies looking at

The the external consequence of these sorts of interim uses one study looked at three and a half million dollars of demolition that I did in Flint at the very beginning of the creation of the Genesee County Land Bank and measured the impact that those demolitions and greening had on the value of properties

Within various proximities and it showed that the three and a half million dollars unlocked about a hundred and twenty million dollars of value that had essentially been stolen by the surrounding properties because of the conditions that they were surrounded by so understanding the the dynamic nature

Of land and that you can’t treat land as a commodity that once sold its put on the back of a flatbed truck and shipped out to the purchasers place in West Covina it’s still there it’s still in Akron or its in Flint and it has a positive or a negative externality

As you can see Dan and I can talk about land banks all day we’re dangerously close to doing this so I want to make sure that we answer some more questions hello I’m Roger Lance I’m from Wilson North Carolina and the historic preservation tax credits been really successful and often helps tackle vacant

Buildings and in our downtown’s and and some of the surrounding neighborhoods there’s a handful of states that have not a historic building tax credit but just a vacant building tax credit do you see where the federal government could consider something like that I mean I think it’s a really powerful tool and

And the reason being is you know the opportunity zone credit it’s really difficult to use new markets tax credit it’s very difficult to use you have to bring in all kinds of professionals the historic tax credit it’s a pretty simple tool it’s very effective sometimes we over engineer things I

Wonder if there’s something simple like that that might help this this problem for my point of view yes if it’s properly targeted the use of the tax code I think you know it can be controversial admittedly but it’s I think a very effective way to incentivize these sorts of investment

Because it leverages public capital through tax incentives to gain pretty significant private investment one area where I think we can explore it is sort of at the federal level taking a page out of something that I did when I was in Michigan and that is to modify the definition of brownfield to include

Obsolete property and the structure above grade and treat it the same way we treat other contaminated sites and allow for either tax or other government incentives to apply to the above-ground troubles as much as we do for enriched contaminated soil below ground and and I we were able to do some really

Interesting brownfield redevelopment financing by using an Allison from my staff who about to have a fit because I’m gonna say it you know scattered site cross-collateralized brownfield tax increment financing the most exciting thing a man the most exciting thing I ever did into that end all I had one thing this

Is one of the another philosophies that you know I always said that we were gonna you know whatever we’re gonna do do it whatever we do good at do it really well and then get out of the business if we don’t do good at and then

Start picking up the things that we you know that we were missing I don’t know anybody that doesn’t like historic preservation tax credits across the country every everybody loves them I’ll introduce you to some people well but I’m telling you but you know what those are the naysayers and that’s

The 20% the other part of it why not and I would implore the federal government do it again allocate more do a lot of them because that’s the only that’s the only bad part is that is that there’s a lot of competition for them even across

The state like Ohio you know you see one allocations in sanad II and then none anywhere else you’re killing me here smalls I mean I we need you know you use it all over the place because of these of what has gone on the last 50 years

It’s a really important point one of the real struggles is and you talked about it when you when we were we’re talking about the tax incentives we just don’t do a very good job of targeting this stuff and and we we have to recognize that distress comes in lots of different

Forms and degrees of severity but we have these tools that sort of paint a broad brush and this is like with whether it’s at brownfield financing or historic tax credit financing new market tax credits opportunities owns all of it we’ve kind of recognized that it’s not about distressed and non-distressed

We have this subset of communities in this country that are dealing with struggles that are so deep and so serious that those tools are not enough and we have to concentrate and elevate the focus in those places and this is why I think I was so disappointed in the

Opportunity zone concept because it had such promise and maybe it still does I’m not I’m not I don’t want to be completely negative on this but let’s just face it though the gravity of capital it’s going to go to the places with the greatest possibility of return and the fact that the Flint

Michigan opportunity’s own site a city that has 60% poverty and has been distressed for 40 years gets exactly the same benefit as the one in Myrtle Beach South Carolina anybody from Myrtle Beach oh that’s good or pick another place I mean the proximity of the defined zone that’s the

Equity to real wealth is really troubling I’m gonna ask a question would kind of take you a little bit out of out of land banks and and what you’ve been talking about Ukraine so maybe okay me over president thank you you know over the last a couple of years the American Planning Association

Has spent a lot of its time and energy in the areas of diversity inclusion and equity and we’ve made amazing strides internally and and and helping our planners you know foster those those ideas last year we subtly changed our mission for those people we used to be making great communities happen we are

Now creating great communities for all and I’m gonna take you a little bit outside of that zone both of your communities or both your areas have been losing population and I applaud you for thinking about the quality of the city and the services that you provide to the

Community and hopefully the growth will happen we have been told over the last two and a half years this country is full and and communities like yours are not for talk to me a little bit about how this economic development and revitalization in your cities when you include immigration and refugees it’s a

Great question we were not full by the way yeah you know and I think it all we have to do is look at our own history like my own hometown of Flint was built by immigrants and there was this moment a moment that was occurring more than two

And a half years ago by the way but there was this moment when we were actually organizing in Flint and generally in Michigan with our then governor who happened to be of a different party with whom I end up having a lot of differences Governor Snyder differences over the Flint water

Thing but we were working collaboratively on a strategy to deal specifically with Syrian refugees as not only an effort to live up to you know the promise on the Statue of Liberty and all the are the moral elements of this but as a very focused strategy around growth around development around

Re-energizing these places with the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that immigrants clearly do represent and we had this whole you know concept which was never implemented for reasons that are painfully obvious that was intended to be a welcoming place for that specific set of refugees and you could

Sort of fill in the blank with all the other communities from across the world that continue to see the United States is there potential end of opportunity I think it’s a really important question that obviously is going to be difficult to address given the current makeup of our government I mean personnel is

Policy you know but it’s such an important point that I’m glad you’re raising it and we were at a moment preparing to fully take advantage of that opportunity in that moment was essentially stolen from us we need to get back to it I can tell you and I

Start a lot of speeches off this wait you know my grandfather fell off a boat from Italy and started selling vegetables at the corner and three grocery stores later in three generations Here I am and I’m gonna be a grandfather here in about a week so it’s now gonna be five generations but

Actually we are the largest we’re a welcoming City for a reason and we’ve always been very diverse especially in the northern end of town so we’re the largest destination of Bhutanese Nepalese and current population in the in the country and I know in the state of Ohio also the second-leading second

Destination as family members get here too and Hispanics and it actually has stemmed our population loss and if we didn’t have those immigrants and refugees coming here you know we’d probably be about 15,000 people less the Knights the knight Foundation did a study and it’s been a three point four

Billion dollar impact into the local economy when it comes to it has stabilized property values property values are actually going up in in in that area town on the northern end of town it’s the only way we are gonna grow I mean you you see declining population

Rates or you see declining birth rates across the world and you see populations declining it’s all and that’s all well and good but if you’re not gonna be an attractive place and the people don’t come here you’re gonna stay at your same level and you’re gonna go down so or

You’re gonna eventually shrink at some point so we’re a welcoming City for a reason and as long as I’m mayor we’re gonna continue to do that I I would say I don’t like the current climate around it but what it has done is it allowed the first two waves of refugees and

Immigrants that come in to kind of settle in a little bit in in two areas down we still need more because we’re not full we still have we have the room for that growth when it comes to capacity for more construction more wealth more people more water customers

That’s the whole growth strategy we mean more of everything I don’t want to say hey don’t come we need your we need them I mean I’m sorry that’s just the way I’m gonna take a look at it and if somebody wants to run on and do something else that’s fine

But we need we’d like I said we need more people so yeah so in our work across the country we are seeing some challenges with with immigrant enclaves so I cities like Flint and Akron are absolutely right that they need them and and what that means for immigrant

Populations coming in is a very friendly local business culture because where we’re seeing just this whole host of kind of entrepreneurial spirit grow in these places I mean so and they and their kind of addition to the local tax pays homeowners right because this whole kind of notion about becoming an

American is you know part of that is home ownership so I think those are some of the real positive things I think we’re where the struggle is is what does that mean for residents that are still in these cities right so we we do have a

Lot of kind of honest talk about how do we get our long term white residents ready for an influx of new of new residents right and I think that’s something we haven’t solved yet because and it is a challenge we don’t want to alienate anyone and we don’t want

Immigrants moving in newcomers coming into our communities and feeling like they’re kind of ostracized and alienated right so what does that mean in terms of kind of political representation what does that mean in terms of them integrating it to the business community housing options so I mean I think this

Is a very big question and to be honest I think it’s a question of what does integration look like and how do we help Retin long term residents really really kind of make this shift because a lot of where people live is about identity you grew up your community was a particular

Way I grew up in all immigrant community in Brooklyn New York my father’s an immigrant my mother was the only native-born Speaker I knew growing up you know and this all kind of builds your own identity of what you think about when you call home and so as that

Changes you know people start to kind of question what does that mean where am i from what is my community really look like and we need to be able to have those honest conversations with folks about no cities are changing but that doesn’t mean that you can’t feel a

Connection to this city so I do think it’s a process it’s not it isn’t as easy as kind of like just infusing a group in because we don’t want to kind of cause any kind of trauma to any kind of new group coming in especially in the in the very toxic

Climate we’re in right now right because we’re not just kind of in this we were in a different climate a few years ago but we’re in a different climate now where you know things can kind of like fall out of people’s mouths in a way that can be really hurtful and dangerous

Right so I do think we have to do a lot more work both with new communities coming in but also existing communities that they really understand that there’s an economic benefit but also there’s a social benefit so yeah it’s working progress to be absolutely honest with you I couldn’t agree more

Especially as you’re going through that and quite frankly you know there are some there has been some pushback in the african-american population a little bit about because there are some misnomers or misperceptions out there that says well listen everybody that comes in they get a car they get a house and they get

A check and wait listen that’s the furthest thing from the truth but if we’re not gonna be welcoming for all quite frankly we’ve got some making up to do to because we didn’t do a very good job you know when when it comes to redlining when it comes to those things

And all of a sudden we’re gonna trying to get it right so I mean we’re I mean we have some making up to do but it also has to be we have to have those policies and those procedures and everything else has said listen we’re doing this for

Everybody not just for one group so if we’re gonna put our thumb on the scale it is for everybody to be able to make up that difference and and you know the congressman said as you do that as when it comes to that prosperity and when it

Comes to what it looks like it’s like you know the we could be a force for good and for change and we have the capacity to be able to do it and it’s not about making sure this person has more money in their pocket or that

Person has more money in their pocket it hasn’t soö about I think about a common decency of where you don’t want your you know your fellow human being or person to live below it’s a lot of work and a lot of catch up to me I think it’s some

Of the most exciting stuff I’ll do I know I’m living the first line of my obituary and I’m happy with it so it’s good stuff good evening any Hitchings I’m the chair of our chapter presidents counts I’m from Durham North Carolina congressman Tildy mayor Horrigan both of you are decision-makers who have worked

Very closely with professional planners what have you found most helpful from having folks with our expertise and what else could we do to enhance our effectiveness and support that we provide it’s a great question and you know planners have been not just helpful but I’ll just give you a 30-second story

When I launched the Genesee County Land Bank I didn’t know what I was doing unlike now and so for the first place I went was the University of Michigan Taubman School of Architecture and urban planning and I met with the Dean and I just said do you have anybody I was

Thinking maybe some graduate students they could work with me to help conceptualize this whole thing and he said I got a better idea I’ve got somebody who’s looking for a project and he’s the Dean that I just replaced sadly this is a gentleman who passed away a

Couple of years ago but he was so full just fundamental to our work his name was Bob Beckley and he and I really were partners in creating the tools a land bank concept because it was clear in thinking through the planning challenges that we were facing what the toolbox

Needed to look like that we needed to think about the tools that support interim use the tools that support homogenate of ori of a land bank these are all planning concepts that were really important I had no concept of and the development challenges and with the patterns of growth it contributed

Contributed to our problem were and how we eventually reversed them so it’s more than just help for me it was just the fundamental notions that I benefited from by turning to I was really a brilliant planner and leader and to be honest with you I miss

Him every single day he he he worked with us and worked as was it was an important part of even the initiation of the Center for Community progress this is live Jason so if I take a shot at you know um usually when they ask Jason a

Question I’ll usually get like you know six emails with about six worth the six weeks worth of reading to catch up on a subject but I would say you know I continue to push us because I think a lot of times especially in this you know

I I look for you know how do we make quick decisions and this this isn’t sometimes these aren’t quick decisions so I think you have to continue to push us to look at that process and respect the process that is just not you know you just don’t come up with a stock

Answer by pulling it off the shelf that’s the hence the word planning it’s a verb you have to plan for some of those things and so I I tell my staff on a continual basis I’m not uncomfortable in a comfortable way but you know they’ve got to feel comfortable doing

That to don’t worry about that you know who cares if we get mad and yelling because we’re gonna do that anyway but can you have to if we’re gonna if you’re gonna work for the right person make sure you continue to push us because we have to eventually make some sort of

Decision that’s going to affect something over the next five or ten years you’ve got to be able to feel comfortable to make sure that we can do that one last thing on that the other piece of it that that I think drove our work was neighborhood planners on the

Ground in the neighborhoods working with the people in those communities to help them realize their own aspirations for their community with the professional help of planners that understand the tools so it’s not just about the macro but it’s actually driving that planning process and all the best decisions that

We made when we created the land bank was to hire not just this magnificent leader who led our planning effort but to hire neighborhood planners that work in the neighborhoods to help us devise the reuse strategies with the community so I want you to join me by thanking

These two gentlemen for a wonderful and live with thank you very much

ID: _p96f5LjkEE
Time: 1570214064
Date: 2019-10-04 22:04:24
Duration: 01:30:38

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