The New Localism by Bruce Katz & Jeremy Nowak

Author:Bruce Katz & Jeremy Nowak [Katz, Bruce & Nowak, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

There are many other poverty alleviation strategies that could also be discussed, from family structure to consumer finance to the cost of housing. They are clearly all critical, particularly affordable housing. But housing policy in America is largely federal and despite the important work of local housing inclusion strategies, federal investments remain determinative. We chose these four strategies because they reflect a New Localism perspective with respect to systems building across local sectors.

CONNECTING GROWTH AND POVERTY

The colocation of poverty and growth is common to most American cities, including those that have emerged from years of decline. Philadelphia is a case in point. Philadelphia’s downtown is the most important residential growth hub of the city, with more than 180,000 residents, and represents the largest single concentration of employment in the region. It accounts for 42 percent of city jobs and 32 percent of all property taxes in a land area that constitutes less than 6 percent of the city. Philadelphia’s tax base would disappear without it. The central core also has the most educated population in the city, with 59 percent of its adults having a college degree or higher. The rate is much higher for those between twenty-five and thirty-four years old, the largest age cohort moving into the downtown area or neighborhoods proximate to it.2

Just west of the downtown area is the city’s second growth hub, the University City area, where the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, the University Science Center, University of the Sciences, and a complex of medical centers and research facilities have generated millions of square feet of commercial real estate over the past decade, as well as new residential, retail, and cultural amenities.

The 2.5-square-mile University City area in West Philadelphia employs 77,000 persons, making it the second largest employment center after the downtown area, and has 44,000 students enrolled in its universities. This second growth node is moving steadily east to connect to the downtown area, as well as south along one of the city’s riverfronts. As with Center City, its population is growing. The University City area also has a significantly greater share of educated residents than the city at large and is among the most important research centers in the state.3

These growth hubs occur in the middle of a very poor city. Philadelphia has the highest level of poverty among the ten largest cities in the nation. About 26 percent of Philadelphians live below the poverty line, including almost half of that number living in deep poverty, defined as below 50 percent of the federal poverty line.4 The result is an uneasy coexistence of dramatic contrasts: young newcomers focused on the future economy, others with limited workforce skills and seemingly limited chances for economic advancement.

How do university research and medical centers link to high-poverty neighborhoods on their periphery? The answer is especially complex because of the history of strained relationships between many universities and their neighbors. In Philadelphia those tensions go back to large-scale urban renewal in West Philadelphia more than half a

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