Greg Schrock

Gauging Metropolitan “High-Tech” and “I-Tech” Activity

In the past few years, a number of new studies have published high-tech rankings of American metropolitan areas that are used by many business consultants and local economic development organizations to advise firms on location strategies. In this article, the authors generate their own rankings based on an occupational definition of “high techness” and compare them with those of four other studies. The results rank larger and older industrial cities, such as Chicago, New York, and even Detroit, higher than many of the smaller places celebrated as high tech, such as Austin. The work demonstrates that the methodology underlying rankings is crucially important to the outcome. By abandoning narrow notions of high tech restricted to maturing technologies in computers, electronics, and telecommunications and instead using science and technology (S&T) occupations as a marker for high tech, it may be possible to tag the innovative potential of emerging sectors, including high-tech services.

Pursuing Equity and Justice in a Changing Climate Assessing Equity in Local Climate and Sustainability Plans in U.S. Cities

Despite interest in the importance of social equity to sustainability, there is concern that equity is often left behind in practice relative to environmental and economic imperatives. We analyze recent climate and sustainability action plans from a sample of twenty-eight medium and large U.S. cities, finding that few made social equity a prominent goal of their plans, although there is a discernible trend in this direction. We present case studies of three cities that incorporated social equity goals, concluding that sustainability planning efforts provide strategic opportunities to pursue equity goals, especially where capacity exists among community-based actors to intervene and participate.

Reworking Workforce Development: Chicago’s Sectoral Workforce Centers

In recent years, local officials throughout the United States have attempted to retool workforce development programs that have historically been tied to federal antipoverty efforts to address the needs of employers in industries considered important for local economic development. But are these old and new goals for workforce development reconcilable? Does a more employer- and industry-focused approach affects the ability of policymakers and practitioners to address the problems of low-wage labor markets? This article examines a recent initiative in Chicago to establish sector-based workforce centers in the manufacturing and service industries. This case study finds that efforts to “rework” the public workforce development system to meet the needs of employers can be at odds with efforts to meet the needs of disadvantaged populations. But greater proximity to employers can also enhance the system’s capacity to promote more progressive human resource practices and equitable labor market outcomes.

Connecting People and Place Prosperity: Workforce Development and Urban Planning in Scholarship and Practice

In recent years, the field of workforce development has emerged as a distinct area of policy and practice. While planning scholars have begun to engage with the workforce development field, its relevance and points of connection to planning scholarship remain underexplored. This article attempts to define the workforce development field by articulating its core concerns as well as its domains of practice and scholarship outside the planning field. The article locates workforce development within three stands of planning scholarship, concluding that workforce development represents an important bridge for planners between “place” and “people” prosperity within communities.

Rejoinder: High-Tech Rankings, Specialization, and Relationship to Growth

Our respondents—Cortright and Mayer (2004 [this issue]), Gottlieb (2004 [this issue]), and Mathur (2004 [this issue])—greatly enrich the debate over high-tech rankings, relationship to growth, and specialization. We are grateful to them both for the questions they raise about our work and for the depth of critique they bring to thediscussion. All three responses, in particular Gottlieb’s, continue our methodological debate, providing valuable insights for both theory and practice. Mathur inspires us to look more deeply at the relationship between high tech and job growth as well as our definition of human capital. We find Cortright and Mayer’s views on specialization particularly provocative and Gottlieb’s framing of that issue in terms of urbanization and localization economies very useful. The following response takes up these three issues in turn.

Remains of the Progressive City? First Source Hiring in Portland and Chicago

Within urban scholarship, there is an ongoing interest in the potential for progressive alternatives to growth-oriented economic development. This article examines the experience of two U.S. cities, Portland (Oregon) and Chicago, in the use of “First Source Hiring” policies from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Although Portland’s policy endured over a long period of time, it has fallen into obscurity, while Chicago’s program was short lived but stimulated a period of significant innovation within the workforce development field in its wake. I conclude that their respective experiences illustrate why and when history matters, calling attention to the importance of institutionalization of progressive policies and practices.

The Maker Movement and Urban Economic Development

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The maker movement is placing small-scale manufacturing development on mayoral agendas across the United States and promises to reinvigorate production economies in central cities. To make effective policy, planners need more knowledge about the entrepreneurs at the center of this phenomenon. Here we present a qualitative investigation of urban maker economies. We draw on semistructured interviews with firms and supportive organizations in Chicago (IL), New York City (NY), and Portland (OR). A limitation of our approach stems from the unavailability of population parameters; we cannot confirm that our sample reflects the universe of maker enterprises. We find that makers draw on ecosystems comprising mainly for-profit firms. The public and nonprofit sectors are important in areas where markets do not provide the resources that fledgling makers require. We find 3 distinct types of maker enterprise: micromakers, global innovators, and emerging place-based manufacturers. Each makes a different contribution to local and regional economic development. Takeaway for practice: Planners can maximize the potential of the maker movement by distinguishing among the 3 types of maker firms. Practitioners focused on employment creation should prioritize emerging place-based manufacturers, helping them build supply chain connections and ensuring that they have affordable space into which to expand. Artisanal micromakers also generate economic benefits, as do global innovators focused on product design and prototyping. But emerging place-based manufacturers have the highest potential for employment creation, both directly and via the business growth they stimulate.

Did US regions with manufacturing design generate more production jobs in the 2000s? New evidence on innovation and regional development

US manufacturing policies increasingly steer resources toward the act of innovation. Emerging case-study evidence suggests that this innovation leads to manufacturing job growth. However, the case-study evidence from which this claim is assembled is incomplete and selective. Using regional-level industry-occupation data for US manufacturing sectors, we test the contribution of manufacturing innovation activities to production employment growth within US regions, for the 2000–2006 and 2006–2010 periods. While production employment continued to disperse from sites of historical manufacturing concentration over both time periods, innovation activities provided some advantages. From 2000 to 2006, regions with higher innovation concentrations in high-tech and medium–low technology industries, experienced slower rates of production employment decline. From 2006 to 2010, a period spanning the Great Recession, innovation activities were associated with reduced production job losses for industries of all technology levels. These results indicate that innovation has benefits beyond high-technology industries, but that those benefits are limited and selective.