Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

National Manufacturing Policy, Local Real Estate Markets, And The Missing Region: Prospects For Urban Industrial Development In The U.S., Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

"Wage Deserts:" An Exploration Of Geographically Concentrated Poverty In Philadelphia, Pa Using Census Lehd Data, Laura Wolf-Powers, Shiva Kooragayala, Katie Nelson, Joshua Warner

Laura Wolf-Powers

This presentation develops the idea of a "wage desert," a census tract in which more than 80% of wage earners are earning less than a self-sufficiency wage. It was an invited presentation at the Census Bureau's annual LED Partnership Workshop in September, 2014.

Growing Food To Grow Cities? The Potential Of Agriculture For Economic And Community Development In The Urban United State, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

New York City's Community-Based Housing Movement: Achievements And Prospects, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

A contribution to the book about the relationship of community-based activism to planning, this paper, highlights the experience of community-based not-for-profit housing organizations in New York City and their relationship (from the 1970s through to the present) with that city’s elected officials and executive agencies. I argue that in New York City, community-based organizations have unambiguously added strategic value in the social housing arena, becoming part of the production system and governance framework for the city's affordable housing. Moreover, their political participation and advocacy have helped to bring about many of the policies that currently structure this system. Their role …

Understanding Biopharmaceutical Employment Growth In North Carolina: A "Working Regions" Approach, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

Scholars of the life sciences industry argue that spatial linkages between research and production have been critical to the growth of the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical sectors. (Feldman and Ronzio, 2001, 2006; Pisano, 1997). More recently, work by Jennifer Clark has suggested that firms in innovation-intensive industries gain competitive advantage from localized supply chains and close control over the manufacturing process. Clark contends that the co-location of design and production makes for regional economies that are innovative and resilient as well as more socially equitable (2013).

Because it has been difficult to understand spatial relationships between manufacturing and R&D using establishment …

Teaching Planners To Deal : The Pedagogical Value Of A (Simulated) Economic Development Negotiation, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

Three decades after planners in North America and Europe began adopting the public–private partnership approach, such arrangements have become the norm in urban redevelopment and city-building. As a result, when teaching real estate development as a facet of urban economic development, academic practitioners of planning face an uneasy dichotomy between deliberation—which embraces the “plannerly” virtues of inclusivity and participation—and negotiation, the procedural vocabulary of public–private contracting. This dichotomy is felt acutely by instructors who are interested in incorporating principles of equity and social justice into redevelopment pedagogy.

This paper describes a classroom exercise in which students apply negotiation and project …

Predictors Of Employment Growth And Unemployment In U.S. Central Cities, 1990-2010, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

This paper, refereed and published by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Policy, considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public capital investment as influences on job growth and changes in unemployment rates in 83 central cities in the United States. Change in educational attainment over time is suggestive of causing higher job growth and lower unemployment. The implication is that initiatives to attract and retain …

Human-Capital-Centred Regionalism In Economic Development: A Case Of Analytics Outpacing Institutions?, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

Teaching Planners To Deal: The Pedagogical Value Of A (Simulated) Economic Development Negotiation, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Community Benefits Agreements In A Value Capture Context, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Designing An Urban Industrial Future: Philadelphia’S Lower Schuylkill Industrial District, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Aligning Secondary And Post-Secondary Credentialization With Economic Development Strategy, Or If Low Educational Attainment = Poor Metropolitan Competitiveness, What Can Be Done About It?, Laura Wolf-Powers, Stuart Andreason

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Human Capital-Centered Regionalism In Economic Development: The Case Of Philadelphia’S Biosciences Sector, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

The paper, drawing on a case study of a regional "talent development" consortium in the Greater Philadelphia metro region, argues that the analytic tools developed to facilitate workforce- and occupation-led economic development are ahead of the institution-building required to put new approaches into practice, for two reasons. First, tensions persist around the role of the public sector workforce system in regional development initiatives. Second, regional stakeholders disagree about whether “knowledge economy” investments should include the training of manufacturing, transportation and logistics workers, leading to the frequent and controversial neglect of blue-collar occupations. The documentation of regional occupational specializations, “talent gap” …

Urban Industrial Land And Land Policy: National Context, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Chains And Ladders: Exploring The Opportunities For Workforce Development And Poverty Reduction In The Hospital Sector, Laura Wolf-Powers, Marla Nelson

Laura Wolf-Powers

In this article, the authors investigate the potential of hospitals to offer low- and semiskilled workers employment and advancement options. This study uses the job chains approach to measuring economic development impacts devised by Persky, Felsenstein, and Carlson to compare hospitals with three other industries highly concentrated in central cities and examines the practical challenges facing workforce development professionals. The findings suggest that growth in hospital employment has the potential to outstrip the impact of growth in accommodations, legal services, and securities and commodities on the well-being of low-income workers and should prompt economic development practitioners to take the sector …

In Print: Pratt Planning Papers, Street, And City Limits, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

This essay appeared in the book Intractable Democracy: FIFTY YEARS OF COMMUNITYBASED PLANNING, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the planning program at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. It concerned the role of significant Pratt-affiliated publications in both influencing and reflecting the planning practices of their times. These publications were the Pratt Planning Papers, STREET Magazine, and City Limits Magazine.

Community Benefits Agreements And Local Government: A Review Of Recent Evidence, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

As community benefits agreements (CBAs) become more common in urban redevelopment, they are generating conceptual confusion and political controversy. Planners who encounter CBA campaigns in practice have limited means of evaluating CBAs’ desirability and likely impact without a more complete understanding of how they interact in practice with municipal government leadership and policy. This paper examines four urban redevelopment projects in which community benefits agreements have been enacted by some combination of community organizations, legislators and developers. While much of the expository literature on community benefits agreements is focused on the inclusivity and political moxy of local organizing coalitions, I …

Keeping Counterpublics Alive In Planning, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Expanding Planning’S Public Sphere: Street Magazine, Activist Planning And Community Development In Brooklyn, Ny 1971-75, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a paradigm of activist planning or critical city planning became a new “tributary” feeding the stream of the planning profession. STREET Magazine, published from 1971 to 1975 by the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development in Brooklyn, NY, offers a lens through which to examine the expansion of the profession to encompass a range of ideas associated with this paradigm. This article, drawing on an extensive review of STREET magazine’s content within the historical context in which it was produced, as well as interviews with people involved with the publication, argues …

How The Far West Side Will Be Won, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Building A Workforce Infrastructure, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.

Technology And Urban Labor Markets In The United States, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

No abstract provided.