Some may think of smart growth as a physical form of development, but in a simpler sense it’s deciding how to best use limited resources when it comes to choices about land use, housing, development, and infrastructure. Our economic development team is at the core of SGA’s work to move the needle on these questions across the country.
Improving racial and social equity is directly connected to building strong local economies, but there’s a mistaken perception that those goals are opposed to one another. Done right, both goals are not just achievable, but essential to a smart growth approach. We’re going to spend the rest of the summer explaining how and why.
Our team has spent the last few months speaking to a variety of communities who host nuclear power plants to navigate the process of closing down and chart a sustainable economic future. Here’s a short summary of what we’re learning:
LOCUS and the Brookings Institution partnered on this research which examines the state of the real estate industry with data-backed insights, unpacking a series of five trends that are converging to create a mismatch between what the real estate industry is building and what is sorely needed to build a prosperous economy where everyone gets a chance to succeed.
The real estate industry is failing to fully address persistent segregation by race and income, pent-up demand for more attainable housing, destabilized regional housing markets fueled by climate change, and other converging trends. It’s time for a real estate reset.
Smart Growth America (SGA), the leading advocate for people who want to live and work in great neighborhoods, is pleased to announce the Nuclear Closure Communities Technical Assistance program.
The new Opportunity Zone tax incentive was conceived as a tool to promote economic development, job creation, poverty reduction, and support for new businesses in areas of concentrated poverty. A couple years in, is it having the desired effects for small business stability and growth, especially for minority-owned legacy businesses?
Absent major changes, the majority of the nuclear power plants in the U.S. may close in the next few decades. This presents an enormous economic development challenge in what are mostly fairly small or rural communities where these plants are located.
With investments from the Opportunity Zone tax incentive flowing into these newly designated zones for a few years now, our new report sought to find out: Are these investments supporting small business stability and growth, achieving the stated goal of place-based economic development and job creation in distressed communities? If not, why not? And what are the risks and rewards specifically for minority-owned legacy businesses within Opportunity Zones?
Last week, we hosted “Lessons learned in small-scale manufacturing,” a webinar that revisited communities we’ve helped with small-scale manufacturing and place-based economic development over the past three years. Speakers shared lessons and ongoing successes in Knoxville, TN; Columbia, MO; and Lafayette, LA. A recording of the webinar is now available and you can read a short recap below.