Economic Development Partnership | Massachusetts Manufacturing Study | Labor Market Assessment Tool (LMAT) | The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2006-2007 | RoxburyMatters.org | Commonwealth Housing Task Force Project | Transportation Priorities Task Force | Urban Policy Textbook Project | Heart of the City Database | National Governors Association Best Practices | Maverick Gardens Hope VI Project | World Class Housing Collaborative | Urban Outreach Council | Career Ladders Project | Community Enterprise Technical Assistance Collaborative | Urban Policy and Urban Studies at Northeastern University

Economic Development Partnership

The Center has embarked upon an initiative to help cities, towns, and full service counties surmount the "deal breakers" within their control that have been working against their efforts to foster economic growth and opportunity...to enhance the power of local officials to affect positive change in policies and procedures and to better enable these communities to compete for critically needed private sector investment.

Guided by input from a broad group of public and private sector partners from the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), the National League of Cities, and the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, the goal of the Economic Development Partnership is to create a practical set of tools for local governments to better position themselves to attract industry, private investment, a sustainable tax base and high quality good-paying jobs. One of the Partnership's most exciting features is an in-depth Self-Assessment Tool for evaluating and interpreting a municipal jurisdiction's characteristics and processes directly linked to the factors affecting local investment.

The Partnership was envisioned and created as a result of Associate Director David Soule's April 2004 report The Rebirth of Older Industrial Cities: Exciting Opportunities for Private Sector Investment. That report's research focused on sites identified by officials in Boston, Chelsea, Holyoke, Lawrence, and New Bedford, and on six key industrial sectors, all identified as strategic by the state government: health care/life sciences, biotechnology, information technology, financial services, traditional manufacturing, and travel and tourism. More than 50 business leaders and commercial real estate professionals were interviewed in order to determine the factors most important in location decisions. CURP focused in particular on firms that had an existing or recently established urban presence in one of the study cities to determine what factors contributed to the decision to locate, expand, or remain in these urban locations.

Now, as of May 2007, a continually-growing group of 30 communities are working together to improve the practice of economic development at the local level. For more information, please visit the Economic Development Partnership website.

Massachusetts Manufacturing Study

The Massachusetts state legislature and Governor Patrick's team hope to make the State a supportive environment for manufacturing operations. To do so, good information is needed. The Center has therefore undertaken a manufacturing study to determine: What is manufactured today in Massachusetts? Where are the manufacturers located? What factors or issues either support of hinder manufacturing? How can State government better support manufacturing in Massachusetts?

These questions will be answered through a variety of angles:

• Preparing econometric analysis, including trends, using US Census data
• In-depth surveying of manufacturers in the state
• Interviewing 125 manufacturers and/or recent locators/expander in the state
• Producing GIS maps of sector-specific employee concentrations
• Analyzing all results and preparing policy recommendations

CURP Senior Fellow Don Walsh is leading this project, with assistance from Reasearch Assistant Marc Horne and Research Associates Lauren Nicoll and Abby Goldstein.

Labor Market Assessment Tool (LMAT)

The Labor Market Assessment Tool (LMAT) is an interactive software package developed by CURP with the Research Division at the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). LMAT is an innovative computer program comprised of secondary data sources that can examine various characteristics within the labor market, such as skill and educational requirements, industry and occupational projections, as well as the demographic characteristics of the potential labor supply.

The model utilizes the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES), Occupational Information Network (O*NET), ES-202 Employment and Wages Data, and Summary Files of the US Census to estimate labor demands (e.g. educational requirements, job attributes, and industry characteristics) and labor supply (e.g. human capital and worker attributes). In addition, the model uses Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projections to the year 2014, so it is possible to assess how labor market trends may change over time.

The tool is still in development, however, the research staff at the BRA has already used LMAT to assess language skill requirements by major industry groups for a presentation by the Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) on the need for additional funding for ESOL training.

Over the summer of 2007, the BRA research staff plans to begin a new series of reports entitled The LMAT Series, analyzing various labor market issues in the Boston area.

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2006-2007

This is the fifth such annual report that CURP has prepared for the Boston Foundation and Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA). The Report Card is a diagnostic tool that provides an annual assessment of the region's progress toward providing housing opportunities for all of its citizens. It focuses on housing production in 161 cities and towns including and surrounding Boston and examines trends in housing prices and rents, the preservation of affordable housing, and state and federal funding levels for subsidized housing.

Housing production goals for the region had been established in an earlier CURP report commissioned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Issued in September 2000, A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston warned that high housing costs and inadequate inventory were threatening the region's economic competitiveness.

The sponsors of The New Paradigm report also called for an objective system by which to measure the progress the region was making toward meeting its housing needs, and the Report Card was designed to do that by annually performing the following tasks:

• Assessing economic trends and market conditions that affect current and projected housing needs;
• Collecting, consolidating, and reporting housing data from various public and private sources that can be used to assess the adequacy of production levels;
• Improving accessibility and utility of information so that policymakers, housing advocates, community leaders, realtors, housing developers, and others can evaluate performance;
• Measuring progress in key areas of housing development, including production of new housing and rehabilitation of the existing stock, housing affordability, and government support for housing.

What distinguishes The Greater Boston Housing Report Card from the many other excellent housing reports that this region generates is this annual monitoring of housing activity by type, location and price point. By identifying trends early on, and clarifying their impact, the Report Card has helped galvanize private and public support for meeting the housing challenges faced by the Greater Boston region.

RoxburyMatters.org

RoxburyMatters.org is a community-driven effort to provide neighborhoods in Boston that are traditionally underserved by mainstream media, particularly Roxbury, with an engaging ultra-local news, events, and information source. Through partnering with community activist Zakiya Alake, the Center is providing technical assistance on this project.

The website, to be launched in the summer of 2007, will consist of five sections – News, Articles and Opinions; Community Calendar; Community Resource Links; Peacemaking Resource Center; and Contests/Polls.

As soon as RoxburyMatters.org goes live, the CURP website will announce the launch to its readers.

Commonwealth Housing Task Force Project

The Commonwealth Housing Task Force (CHTF) is an ad hoc group representing widely-diverse constituencies: business and civic leaders, foundation leadership, affordable housing advocates, the environmental community, organized labor, real estate developers, elected and appointed officials at both the state and local levels, and higher education. They have come together to find common ground and to address the state's housing crisis on a coordinated basis.

The CHTF engaged CURP to prepare the landmark report, "Building on Our Heritage: A Housing Strategy for Smart Growth and Economic Development," that served as the foundation of statewide legislation, the new Chapter 40R (Smart Growth Zoning and Housing Development Act). The legislation was enacted by the Massachusetts Legislature and signed by the Governor in June of 2004. Ted Carman, President of Concord Square Development Company along with Eleanor White, President of Housing Partners, Inc., and Barry Bluestone, Director of CURP, conducted the research and wrote the report.

Since then, the CHTF has been working with the state to analyze the effect of school costs on zoning and housing development. Toward this end, the team of Carman, White, and Bluestone prepared "Chapter 40R School Cost Analysis and Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement," which has provided the basis for another new law, Chapter 40S, which has passed the Massachusetts Senate and is awaiting action in the Massachusetts house. The new law is expected to be passed by the House before it adjourns on November 18, 2005. CURP has also been asked by the task force to coordinate outreach and information dissemination to municipalities throughout Massachusetts.

Visit the Commonwealth Housing Task Force's website.

Transportation Priorities Task Force

The Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Boston District Council, with financial support from The Boston Foundation, has recently created the Transportation Priorities Task Force as part of a two-track effort to shape the state’s transportation policy and investment. Massachusetts is currently forming a 20-year Transportation Plan that will ultimately serve as the blueprint for $30 billion in transportation spending over the next two years. Through the task force, ULI Boston is working to ensure that this massive investment in transportation is positively focused to advance important objectives relating to urban revitalization, smart growth, housing production, environmental protection and regional equity. The task force is coordinated by Stephanie Pollack, a senior research associate at CURP.

Urban Policy Textbook

CURP Director Barry Bluestone, along with Senior Research Associates Russell Williams and Mary Huff Stevenson, have signed a book contract to produce a new urban textbook suitable for undergraduate courses in economics, sociology, political science, and urban studies. When published, the textbook will play an important role in the new Urban Studies minor at Northeastern.

Heart of the City Database

In the geographic center of Boston lies a unique collection of neighborhoods, parks, transportation centers and corridors, civic and social spaces. The structure of these communities is unusually fragmented. In the center of the area lie the city’s biggest parks and natural spaces - Franklin Park, the Arnold Arboretum, the Forest Hills Cemetery, the new Boston Nature Center, and several other cemeteries. On the edges of those green spaces are the city’s most diverse areas - parts of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roslindale.

The products of the Heart of the City project include a report and a comprehensive database of information about the area that is now continually updated through resident input and targeted research, www.heartofcity.info. The website includes information about hundreds of places and issues in the area - places as big as the neighborhood of Roxbury and as small as a half-acre pocket park. Photos, maps, and a list of sources complement each database entry. To access the information, a visitor to the website need only know the name of his or her street.

The Heart of the City project is a joint effort of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, the Arnold Arboretum, and CURP. Joe Christo, Managing Editor at CURP, is responsible for maintaining and updating the site. You can contact him at: j.christo@neu.edu.

National Governors Association Best Practices

Northeastern's Center for Urban and Regional Policy has been selected -- as part of a team with Marvin Siflinger and Eleanor White of Housing Partners, Inc. and Ted Carman of Concord Square Development -- as faculty for a major policy academy titled "Strategies for Coordinating Housing and Economic Development" sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices and the Fannie Mae Foundation. Northeastern experts on the team include Barry Bluestone, David Soule, and Bonnie Heudorfer from CURP and Paul Harrington from the Center for Labor Market Studies.

In this role, from May to October, 2005, the CURP team will provide expert advice and guidance to the Governors of six states and their senior level staff. In collaboration with the state officials, the team will be thinking about how best to coordinate housing and economic development to address issues identified by each Governor to achieve the state goals outlined in their applications to NGA. The states, selected competitively by NGA, are (in alphabetical order) Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. CURP and its partners are honored to have been selected for this assignment and excited about the potential to work with so many innovative leaders from across the country.

The links below lead to various resource materials that should prove useful to states in working through many of these issues:

The Rebirth of Older Industrial Cities
Executive Summary
Full Report

Building on our Heritage: A Housing Strategy for Smart Growth and Economic Development
Executive Summary
Full Report

School Cost Analysis (Chapter 40S)
Full Report

Greater Boston Housing Report Cards
Housing Report Card 2002
Housing Report Card 2003

A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston
Full Report

Chapter 40R: Smart Growth Zoning and Housing Production Act
Chapter 40R Text
Chapter 40R Regulations (link coming soon)
Summary of Chapter 40R

Maverick Gardens Hope VI Project

The Boston Housing Authority (BHA) solicited the aid of CURP in assessing the redevelopment of the 60-year-old Maverick Gardens housing development in East Boston. A team of CURP staff and fellows, led by Senior Research Associate Joan Fitzgerald, is currently in the process of evaluating the revitalization project, which was made possible through a $35 million Hope VI award that the BHA won in 2001.

Enacted in 1993, Hope VI is a federally funded program that allows public housing authorities to apply for funding to redevelop severely distressed housing developments. Redevelopment under the Hope VI program focuses on three areas: physical improvements, management improvements, and social and community services to address residents’ needs.

The federal grant of $35 million will also be supplemented by financial commitments from the BHA, the City of Boston, and state and private sources, bringing the total budget for the project to $145 million.

The evaluation being conducted by CURP will assess three parts of the redevelopment. The first component will focus on the outcomes of the program on the community’s revitalization and on the 1,162 current residents of Maverick Gardens. The outcomes on participants will be measured in three areas: reducing welfare dependency, increased earnings through employment, and job advancement toward self-sufficiency. In addition, it will measure the progress in achieving the outcomes specified in the physical revitalization plan.

The second component will assess the impact on the surrounding community. Many neighboring residents have expressed the desire for more childcare, better crime prevention, less litter, and more youth and community services. The impact assessment will establish the extent of improvement in these areas.

The final component is the process evaluation, which will determine how effectively the BHA is managing the program, including management of social services and physical plan improvements.

World Class Housing Collaborative

The World Class Housing Collaborative (WCHC) was established at Northeastern University in 2001 to help expedite the production of quality housing in Greater Boston.

WCHC defines "World Class Housing" as housing that strengthens and stabilizes entire communities by providing bridges to social, economic, and cultural opportunities. For housing to provide a strong and secure investment, it must contain all the elements that make neighborhoods attractive, vibrant, and safe - transit connections, parks and civic spaces, shopping centers and job opportunities, social services, educational programs, and recreational spaces for young and old alike.

Every project to which WCHC lends technical assistance has, at its core, active community involvement. The collaborative takes its direction from the community, partnering with local officials, neighborhood organizations, and individuals to realize their vision for neighborhood rebirth.

The Collaborative's day-to-day focus is on project-specific implementation. We offer technical assistance with architectural renderings, environmental assessments, community relations, project financing, and property management. Ultimately, the Collaborative will create an inclusive, university and community-based, streamlined process for housing development that can be replicated in neighborhoods throughout the region and ultimately the nation.

In its first three years, the World Class Housing Collaborative will strive to help neighborhood organizations and developers create 200-300 new units of housing in the Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston.

In its first full-scale projects, WCHC will be working with the Dorchester Housing and Open Space Action Team (DHAT) on the development of a gateway to the long-neglected neighborhood at the intersection of Bowdoin and Geneva streets, and the development of affordable housing on a two-acre site adjacent to the intersection. DHAT is a neighborhood-based planning and advocacy group for affordable housing that was formed in 1995. It is an informal collaboration of community agencies, resident groups, private and non-profit developers of housing, and public officials dedicated to promoting affordable housing.

One project will be a study of several sites on Geneva Avenue between Columbia Road and Bowdoin Street. In this study, collaborative members will provide planning and urban design assistance to create a cohesive, attractive streetscape and a revitalized intersection that can serve as an entryway to the neighborhood. In addition, there is the potential for new housing and/or commercial activities on adjacent privately-owned vacant land. WCHC will work closely with DHAT to help organize community residents, affected institutions, land owners, and developers around a unified vision for the area. WCHC will also provide technical assistance to integrate and coordinate this new development.

Geneva Cliffs, a two-acre site at the intersection of Geneva Avenue and Bowdoin Street, provides an opportunity to create a unique housing community integrated with and complemented by an upgraded urban wild site. The site is adjacent to a 75,000+ sq. ft. parcel of City Conservation Commission land designated as permanent open space, as well as a large lot formerly used and currently owned by the electric utility NSTAR. WCHC will provide assistance with geotechnical assessments and brownfield remediation to determine possible development options and designs. Members of the collaborative will also address financing options given the challenges presented by the site's location.

First Principles of the WCHC:

• We participate only when invited into a community.
• We work to fulfill the aspirations of neighborhood residents.
• We strive to expedite the creation of desirable, affordable, and durable housing.
• We seek to improve the quality of life, the stability, and the economic and social well-being of the neighborhoods where we work.
• We aim to build the capacity of residents to affect future development activities in their own neighborhoods.

For more information about the World Class Housing Collaborative, or to request our assistance, please contact CURP at (617) 373-7870.

Urban Outreach Council

In the fall of 1996, President Freeland created the Urban Outreach Council as a new coordinating agency for Northeastern's interface with the surrounding communities, which includes representatives of the major offices and units across the University that are involved in various university-community linkages. The council serves as a coordinating body, surveying the University to identify outreach activities; linking various institutes, clinics, projects, and programs as a clearinghouse; and clarifying the University's urban mission and vision. The council also works with the President to develop a comprehensive and long-term economic development strategy for the University-community linkages.

The UOC's mission includes: "We believe that the classic distinction between university and community is a false dichotomy. The university is part of the community and should operate accordingly. In order for communities to be vibrant, all of its members should be connected and operating at their full capacity and potential."

Chaired by Michael Dukakis and Joseph Warren, the Urban Outreach Council convenes committees on economic development, public health, and education. CURP enjoys a working realtionship with the UOC, and CURP Director Barry Bluestone serves as head of the economic development subcommittee.

Career Ladders Project

Despite economic growth in the 1990s, too many Americans cannot escape poverty. Low-wage workers need more opportunities to upgrade their skills in order to advance into better paying jobs.

CURP's Career Ladders project seeks to identify effective career ladder and wage progression strategies in key occupations and sectors in the new economy. The research focuses on how education and training initiatives launched by workforce intermediaries - community colleges, unions, government agencies, and neighborhood organizations - advance workers into jobs with higher wages and better benefits.

In examining these programs, we focus on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different organizations in providing education and support services to help low-wage workers move up explicit career progression ladders. We also look at this problem from another angle: employers. We investigate efforts to professionalize existing low wage jobs and help employers create internal career paths within their companies. A portion of the Career Ladders project on community colleges is available to download: Community Colleges as Labor Market Intermediaries: Building Career Ladders for Low-Wage Workers .

By finding practical solutions to training workers and upgrading employment, the ultimate goal of CURP’s Career Ladders project is to make sure more people have a ladder of opportunity to climb out of supposedly "dead-end" jobs.

For more information on the Career Ladders project, please contact Joan Fitzgerald.

Community Enterprise Technical Assistance Collaborative

While business has been flourishing in Greater Boston, the number and scale of minority firms is tiny and hardly growing. The latest government survey of minority enterprise taken in 1997 indicates that in all of Boston, there were fewer than five hundred African-American owned companies that employed one or more workers. Only a handful employed more than twenty-five. Statewide, Massachusetts' black-owned businesses employed fewer than 8,300 workers - less than three-tenths of one percent of the Commonwealth's labor force. It is fair to say that no group in the Commonwealth has such a dearth of enterprise-based assets.

The Community Enterprise Technical Assistance Collaborative (CETAC) was founded at CURP to help minority-owned firms expand and prosper, creating new employment opportunity in the process. CETAC began with a study examining changes in the nature of supplier relations between small firms and large institutions - the firms that supply to universities, banks, insurance companies, and hospitals everything from toner cartridges and food service to interior painting and window replacement. CETAC found that because of the wave of mergers involving such large institutions as banks and hospitals, small vendors were being displaced in favor of national and international suppliers with enormous scale economies. CETAC also discovered that businesses unable to engage in e-commerce with business-to-business (B2B) technology soon will be frozen out of the marketplace altogether.

A second CETAC study was designed to assess the capacity of minority businesses in the Greater Boston area to engage in "paperless" transactions and e-commerce with their business clients. The study, when complete, will likely document and a huge "digital divide" between the supplier requirements imposed by large institutions and the information technologies embraced by these smaller minority owned firms.

Based on these research studies, CETAC plans to move into its action phase - working with other units of the university to create websites and B2B capacity for small minority firms in the Boston area. Assembling computer scientists, business school experts, and students, CETAC hopes to create a model program to overcome the digital divide for small firms, helping them to maintain and expand their vendor services to large institutions in the region.

CETAC's first report, "Economic Anchors and Vendor Contracting: New Barriers (and Potential New Opportunities) for Small Minority Business in the New Economy" is available to download. For more information on CETAC, please contact Russell Williams.

Urban Policy and Urban Studies at Northeastern University

CURP is taking the lead on expanding course and program offerings in Urban Studies and Urban Policy at Northeastern. With the switch to semesters in 2003, CURP coordinated an undergraduate minor in Urban Studies. The minor offers undergraduates interested in urban issues an opportunity to develop a tailor-made curriculum. The program starts with a dynamic course that focuses on current issues facing cities and their surrounding suburbs: urban sprawl, poverty, education, transportation, economic development, and housing. This course is followed by one on key issues in the Boston metropolitan area with site visits and guest speakers that allow students to see and hear what urban practitioners do and how they do it. Following Northeastern's tradition of practice-oriented education, the program offers opportunities to engage in urban research and to complete cooperative education placements in organizations that address urban issues (e.g. community-based organizations, city government agencies, metropolitan planning agencies). Students then select additional urban courses from departments across campus.