Hot Jobs in the City: Push for Urban Renewal May Create Jobs

The Obama administration is initiating a revival of America’s urban centers by coordinating federal funding and local innovation which it says will transform cities into new, thriving centers of renewal and jobs.  To spearhead the effort, in April 2009 the White House announced the appointment of the White House Director of Urban Affairs, Adolfo Carrion, the first person to hold the position.

At a July roundtable on urban issues hosted by the White House, President Obama announced the first interagency review of how government invests in urban and metropolitan areas in the last thirty years.   The review will be conducted jointly by the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council and the Office of Urban Affairs. 

This cross-agency approach to urban policy is consistent with the administration’s efforts to break down siloed approaches and replace them with a holistic review which takes into account all aspects of metropolitan area needs. The White House will also take into account needs of entire regions – cities, suburbs and exurbs, in its urban development policies.

Revitalizing cities was an integral piece in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding, signed into law February.   Over $13 billion was earmarked for projects administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has jurisdiction over government-controlled housing in many of the nation’s cities and urban areas.  HUD announced in May that it is making $100 million of that funding available to rid public housing of dangerous lead paint, for example. 

Much of the ARRA funding directed at HUD has an urban feel to it.   For example the “Green Retrofit” program will allow for window replacements and systems upgrades in multi-family buildings to make them more efficient.   While some may call these green jobs, others may see them as traditional brick and mortar construction trades.  However, the Green Retrofit could also fund things like upgraded roofing and solar-powered water heater installation, the department says. 

Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and the Urban Institute, and former Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, looks at the long term policy strategy of revitalizing America’s cities as an unknown.

“Some cities have been thriving in the last ten or 15 years.   They’ve adapted well to the international economy, and they tend to be mostly the highly educated cities.  But that wasn’t driven by policy.  Maybe a little bit, but most happened independent of policy,” says Holzer. 

The cities that were heavily dependent on manufacturing, which has since left, and haven’t replaced those jobs are suffering more, and there are some differences today in the jobs found in cities as opposed to suburban and rural areas, Holzer says. Cities tend to have a greater concentration of some service jobs, both at the high and low ends of the skills spectrum.   There are more restaurants, hospitals and law firms, for example, which require service skills. 

Holzer agrees with the White House plan to expand traditional urban policy to a more metropolitan approach, rather than strictly looking at the needs of the inner city. 

“You want to ensure that whatever jobs and skills training are available in the suburbs would be available in the city too,” says Holzer.   And, he adds, the suburbs aren’t all the same.

“One urban strategy would be ensuring that people in the city have access to good jobs and opportunity.   But people also need to get the skills and you need to have job placement.  Are one-stops [job placement centers] in cities going to help people get jobs in the suburbs, for example, if that’s where the better jobs are? There needs to be coordination.”

Holzer says the talk of green jobs and infrastructure jobs spurred by the ARRA are likely to be similar in the cities and outside of them.   However, construction jobs in cities may be less residential, more bridges and roads, for example. 

“The short term issue is going to be bringing any jobs to anyone, anywhere – replacing the ones we’re losing in the recession, then we will have the luxury of thinking about which jobs are going to which places,” says Holzer.   “It is hard to revitalize cities.  It’s hard to change the mix.” 

Still, the White House plan is an ambitious one, and one that Holzer says may benefit those mid-sized cities struggling to replace a manufacturing base that has evaporated in recent decades.