Karen Chapple

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.

You gotta move: advancing the debate on the record of dispersal

This paper summarizes the social science research on the record of housing dispersal programs since 1995. The research shows a consistently disappointing record of benefits to low-income households. Households moved out of high-poverty neighborhoods, voluntarily and involuntarily, show few or no beneficial effects in terms of economic self-sufficiency, health benefits, or social integration. The benefits of dispersal are confined to feelings of greater safety and satisfaction with neighborhood environmental conditions. We offer a framework for understanding the disappointing record of dispersal, highlighting its translation from social science diagnosis to policy, problems in the policys implementation, its underlying theory of poverty, and the political context within which dispersal has been applied.

The Causes of Inner-City Poverty: Eight Hypotheses in Search of Reality

Over the past 40 years, poverty among the inhabitants of U.S. inner cities has remained stubbornly resistant to public policy prescriptions. Especially for African Americans and Latinos, the gap between their economic well-being and that of the mainstream has widened despite persistent and repeated efforts to address the problem. At the same time, a continuing stream of research has sought to explain urban poverty, with a wide variety of explanations put forward as the basis for policy. This paper reviews that research, organizing it according to eight major explanations or hypotheses: structural shifts in the economy, inadequate human capital, racial and gender discrimination, adverse cultural and behavioral factors, racial and income segregation, impacts of migration, lack of endogenous growth, and adverse consequences of public policy. We conclude that all of the explanations may be relevant to urban poverty but that their significance and the degree to which they are well supported varies substantially.

Innovation in the Green Economy: An Extension of the Regional Innovation System Model?:

Policy makers increasingly look to green innovation as a source of job creation. Using the case of California, we argue that green innovation complicates traditional models of innovation and its role in economic development. This study uses secondary source data and a survey of 650 green and traditional businesses to define the green economy, identify innovation of products and services, and link innovation to sectoral and regional growth. The authors find that the type of innovation and its role varies widely by sector. The most environmentally challenged firms are among the most likely to innovate new processes, whereas new green innovative companies are more likely to respond to local and regional markets. Innovation does not necessarily foster growth. It is a boost to traditional firms, but emerging green firms may need additional tools and the support of local networks to transform new ideas and products to new markets.

Enabling Exclusion The Retreat from Regional Fair Share Housing in the Implementation of the Minnesota Land Use Planning Act

This article examines the impact of regional institutions and a regional planning framework on low- and moderate-income housing efforts in a metropolitan area. The Minnesota Land Use Planning Act (LUPA), enacted in 1976, sets forth the requirement for communities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area to plan for their share of the metro areas need for low- and moderate-income housing. After a period of effective regional planning for low-mod housing, changing political and institutional environments have led to significant decline in the willingness of the Metropolitan Council to implement the law.

“I Name it and I Claim it—In the Name of Jesus, this Job is Mine”: Job Search, Networks, and Careers for Low-Income Women

Much of the quantitative research on labor market attachment within female low-wage labor markets de-emphasizes the variation within this population. Based on in-depth interviews with 92 women on welfare in San Francisco, this article develops a typology of labor market attachment using cluster analysis and illustrates the variation within this labor market segment by focusing on clerical jobs. Various supply-side factors (i.e., education, work experience, and network structure) and demand-side factors (i.e., wages and occupation) interact with the job search method to shape labor market attachment. For chronically unemployed women, informal job search methods in part explain poor labor market outcomes, whereas career-oriented women use network resources and education to connect to career paths. Policies to increase labor market attachment should recognize the interconnectedness of job search strategies, human capital, networks, and demand-side factors by improving employment brokering and addressing long-term workforce development needs.

Spatial justice through regionalism? The inside game, the outside game, and the quest for the spatial fix in the United States

Some regionalists advocate a spatial fix for urban poverty by engaging suburbs in a regional solution. This paper analyzes three such regionalist strategies in light of theories of justice. The idea behind regional strategies for poverty is that they will allow for equality of opportunity and thus improve the life-chances of the impoverished. Yet, casting justice in terms of equality of opportunity alone means neglecting the non-economic aspects of life – capabilities, social needs, urban life and vitality. Changing the spatial distribution of the population may create a more optimal and equitable spatial allocation, but in some ways it fails to acknowledge basic human aspirations to live in security, in community, or in a revitalized core. Taake my word for it Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad. (Tennysons The Northern Farmer quoted in Lund, 1999)

Hidden density in single-family neighborhoods: backyard cottages as an equitable smart growth strategy

Secondary units, or separate small dwellings embedded within single-family residential properties, constitute a frequently overlooked strategy for urban infill in high-cost metropolitan areas in the United States. This study, which is situated within California’s San Francisco Bay Area, draws upon data collected from a homeowners’ survey and a Rental Market Analysis to provide evidence that a scaled-up strategy emphasizing one type of secondary unit – the backyard cottage – could yield substantial infill growth with minimal public subsidy. In addition, it is found that this strategy compares favorably in terms of affordability with infill of the sort traditionally favored in the ‘smart growth’ literature, i.e. the construction of dense multifamily housing developments.

Gentrification, Displacement, and the Role of Public Investment

Scholarly interest in the relationship between public investments and residential displacement dates back to the 1970s and the aftermath of displacement related to urban renewal. A new wave of scholarship examines the relationship of gentrification and displacement to public investment in transit infrastructure. Scholarship has generally conflated gentrification and displacement; however, this review argues for a clearer analytical distinction between the two. Although the displacement discussion in the United States began with the role of the public sector and now has returned to the same focus, it will be necessary to overcome methodological shortcomings to arrive at more definitive conclusions about the relationship.

The Highest and Best Use? Urban Industrial Land and Job Creation

Policy makers seeking to rezone urban industrial land often cite the need to attract or retain non-industrial or high-tech businesses that would otherwise locate in outlying areas or other regions. Yet industrial land may still play an important role in the 21st-century economy. This article describes how industrially-zoned land shapes the dynamics of business relocation and expansion in four San Francisco Bay Area cities. The analysis combines two unique data sets (the National Establishment Time Series and historic zoning maps) and uses multivariate analysis to examine the role of zoning in firm expansion, controlling for firm characteristics, industry, building characteristics, and location. Firm size plays the most important role, but the availability of industrially-zoned land and large buildings also helps firms to expand. The article concludes by outlining land use and economic development strategies that help cities target firms creating jobs on industrial land.