Inner City Economic Summit Recap and Conference Materials

Posted by on October 01, 2012

Inner City Economic Summit
Jobs. Equity. Investment.

Recap and Conference Materials

Last month, ICIC convened 250 corporate, civic and city leaders from across the U.S. to address challenges facing our inner city economies. Practitioners discussed how to align systems – including land use, capital and small business technical assistance – around an inner city’s growth clusters to drive economic and business growth.

Throughout the two-day event, important themes emerged:

Equity is an economic argument—not merely one of fairness. Equity is vital to the growth of our cities, regions and nation—not just our inner cities. Inequality within the region holds growth back for all residents and businesses.
Certainly, regions need to be growing in order for our inner cities to prosper. However, regional job growth is not sufficient for the revitalization of inner city economies.

This recession is atypical; our economy is facing systemic changes that require the alignment of economic development approaches to foster job creation. “We are facing a real competitiveness challenge; this is not a cyclical downturn – it’s something much deeper than that,” explained Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter. We must expand the tool-kit that economic developers use, while aligning capital, business advisory services, land use planning and workforce development to growth industries.

Collaboration is key to affecting real change. Collaborative efforts are often most successful when a neutral, third party convenes stakeholders. Community foundations often lead the charge, but anchor institutions and quasi-public agencies are other neutral conveners. Nearly each What Works panel participant cited collaboration as critical to pushing anchor, food cluster and workforce development projects forward.

Whether linking community capital to city growth clusters can be scaled remains to be seen. There was not consensus on the question. While there are successful models that can be replicated, these programs so far have reached a limited number of businesses. It does appear that there is a benefit of customizing loan vehicles and lending expertise to particular industries.

Existing sources of data about underserved small businesses are insufficient. Current sources of data tend to under-report or inaccurately report the needs of small businesses. We need to get it right: underserved businesses need access to networks, technical assistance, and capital—but there is no one size that fits all.

Read more: http://www.icic.org/connection/blog-entry/blog-a-new-economy-in-need-of-new-tools

All materials from the Summit now are available on ICIC’s website including reflective blog entries, PowerPoint presentations, video footage, handouts and photos.

http://www.icic.org/urban-economic-development/inner-city-economic-summit