Posted by:
Steve Dubb
Philadelphia, Denver, Kansas City practices are highlighted
Following a kick-off event in Washington on July 13th in which President Barack Obama delivered these remarks, the White House Office of Urban Affairs began its tour of urban America ten days later with the first stop in Philadelphia. The listening tour, officially titled in this blog post by Director of Urban Affairs Adolfo Carrión a Conversation on the Future of American Cities and Metro Areas, aims to highlight community building efforts in urban areas and “advance a new federal vision that recognizes cities and metropolitan areas as dynamic engines for our economy, and develop federal policy built on these strengths.”
In his remarks on July 13th, Obama emphasized the importance of cities and metropolitan areas in the U.S. economy and highlighted the directive his administration had made to “the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the Office of Urban Affairs to conduct the first comprehensive interagency review in 30 years of how the federal government approaches and funds urban and metropolitan areas so that we can start having a concentrated, focused, strategic approach to federal efforts to revitalize our metropolitan areas.” In his speech, Obama called attention to some key areas of new model practices that would be highlighted on the tour: urban agriculture in Philadelphia, rapid transit development in Denver, and an effort to “transform a low-income community into a national model of sustainability by weatherizing homes and building a green local transit system” in Kansas City. A news article on the event from the Washington Post is available here.
The visit in Philadelphia involved 300 community members and featured the Farm Fresh Financing Initiative. The Farm Fresh Food Initiative is a partnership led by the The Food Trust, a local nonprofit, in cooperation with the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, and the The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a community development financial institution (CDFI) that to date has helped finance more than 2,400 projects, delivering over $800 million in capital. In Pennsylvania, a one-time State appropriation of $20 million for the Farm Fresh Food Initiative helped leverage $60 million in funding through private sources and a New Markets Tax Credits allocation, raised by TRF. The $80-million finance pool these actions created now serves as a one-stop-shop for financing fresh food retailers in under-served areas. As of June 2009, the Initiative has committed $57.9 million in grants and loans to 74 supermarket projects in 27 Pennsylvania counties, ranging in size from 900 to 69,000 square feet. In total, these projects are expected to create or retain 4,854 jobs and more than 1.5 million square feet of food retail.
Next stop appears to be Denver, with an event scheduled September 18th. The Denver visit is likely to focus on Denver’s FasTracks initiative, an ambitious rapid transit construction project that aims to develop 57 new transit stations with 122 miles of rail and light rail and 18 mile of express “bus rapid transit” service. The Denver initiative also involves explicitly involves efforts to focus real estate development in transit corridors to encourage smart growth and reduce sprawl, a practice known as transit-oriented development. Further details on Denver’s plans in this area are available on this FasTracks website.
In Kansas City, the city has decided to invest $200 million of its stimulus cash into revamping and “greening” a single 150-block section of the city this is mostly black and low-income. This Green Impact Zone initiaitve, as the project is known, would improve public transit, provide job training, weatherize houses, and build a “green sewer” demonstration project, all in an effort to make this low-income section of the city a beacon for smart, green, sustainable economic growth while supporting the creation of green collar jobs. The effort in Kansas City is backed by U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, Mayor Mark Funkhouser, and a unanimous city council, and has also had the support of the national nonprofit PolicyLink. PolicyLink President Judith Bell writes that key facets are likely to include such steps as conducting energy audits on homes and apartments, tapping community residents for “green job skill” training, boosting transit (especially low-cost bus rapid transit), and planting vegetation for a “green sewer” project to soak up storm water and keep it out of the city’s sewer system. Kansas City Star columnist Lewis Diuguid has called the The Green Impact Zone “Kansas City’s 21st century version of the New Deal.”