Creativity for Change: Urbanization and Photography Creativity for Change: Urbanization and Photography

Since December 2007, working families and communities across the country have faced an increasingly difficult economic reality. Growing unemployment and cutbacks in work hours and wages have made it harder and harder for people to make ends meet.

So the census numbers released in September really just confirmed what many Americans have already been feeling during this “Great Recession.” U.S. poverty is once again on the rise. In the first year of the downturn alone, the poor population grew by 2.6 million people to reach a total of 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent of the population.

But that’s not the whole story. The national lens obscures an important fact: place matters. Yes, 2008 brought a significant uptick in poverty, but whether or not your community was a part of this trend has a lot to do with where you live and what kind of jobs are located there.

Certain regions of the country have disproportionately borne the brunt of this recession. Areas hit hardest by the collapse of the housing market and those metro areas that depend on auto manufacturing have experienced the deepest downturns, while regions concentrated in more recession-proof industries – like educational and medical institutions or government – have fared better.

The 2008 poverty numbers reflect this varied experience. Out of the 100 largest metros areas, a little more than one in five saw a significant change in its poverty rate between 2007 and 2008, most of them increases (see map). Not surprisingly, many of these metro areas are located in California and Florida. The early timing of the burst of the housing bubble put these Sun Belt metro areas on the leading edge of what is sure to be a more widespread upward trend in poverty, reflecting a recession that deepened and spread in 2009. In contrast, metro areas like El Paso and Houston actually experienced a decline in poverty rates from 2007 to 2008, reflecting the later onset and milder effects of the downturn in much of Texas.

Although they represent regional economies, metro areas are themselves collections of cities and suburbs that do not necessarily experience poverty or respond to economic shocks uniformly.

Cities remain poorer places overall. In 2008, city residents in the 100 largest metro areas were almost twice as likely as their suburban counterparts to live in poverty—18.3 percent versus 9.5 percent. However, over the first year of the downturn, suburbs actually added more than twice as many poor people (578,000) as cities (218,000). Sun Belt suburbs – like those in the Florida metros of Lakeland, Palm Bay, Tampa, and Miami – led the list for increased poverty. These numbers reflect the fact that the suburbs are home to more people than their primary cities, but they also reflect the growing economic diversity of America’s suburbs.

In fact, an important shift has taken place in the geography of metropolitan poverty over the course of this decade. Between 2000 and 2008, the suburban poor population grew almost five times as fast as the city poor population, so that suburbs are now home to almost 1.9 million more poor people than their primary cities.

Brookings’ recent study on the “Landscape of Recession” within the country’s largest metro areas suggests that the current downturn will further accelerate the suburbanization of poverty.

More so than in the last recession, suburbs are bearing the brunt of this downturn alongside cities. City and suburban unemployment rates increased by nearly equal degrees and in May 2009 were separated by less than a percentage point—9.6 and 8.7 percent, respectively. And rather than concentrating in the older suburbs that surround cities, problems have spread to lower-density “exurbs” and “emerging suburbs” at the metropolitan fringe. These types of suburban communities showed the greatest spikes in their unemployed populations, with an increase of roughly 77 percent.

Clearly, city and suburban residents alike are experiencing increased economic stress, and the coming months and years will test the adequacy and availability of local safety net and emergency services. Here again, place makes a difference.

Case in point: as poverty increased in 2008, more families turned to food stamps (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) to help make ends meet. Just as the poor population grew faster in the suburbs, so did SNAP receipt. And yet participation in the program remains much higher in urban counties (8.9 million recipients) than suburban counties (5.3 million recipients). This disparity raises questions about whether families in suburban communities know how to connect to safety net services like food stamps, and how accessible these services are in these communities.

Understanding the shifting local geography of poverty is a critical first step in effectively addressing its alleviation. In our largest metropolitan areas, safety net services and social service providers traditionally have been concentrated in central city neighborhoods. As the geography of metropolitan poverty continues to change, policymakers and service providers must ask whether or not the growing suburban poor population has access to the same kinds of services and programs that can help families weather downturns in the economic cycle or connect to opportunities to work their way out of poverty.

The Great Recession is only likely to exacerbate gaps between available services and growing need, as government programs and nonprofit providers struggle to do more with less. Knowing where the need is, and where it is growing fastest, can help regions more effectively align existing social services and programs to respond to the new map of metropolitan poverty.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the online forum Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity on October 19, 2009.

Martha Ross spoke to the Advisory Board of the Community Foundation for Prince George’s County, describing research on the suburbanization of poverty both nationally and in the Washington region.

Despite perceptions that economic distress is primarily a central city phenomenon, suburbs are home to increasing numbers of low-income families. She highlighted the need to strengthen the social service infrastructure in suburban areas.

Full Presentation on Poverty in the Washington-Area Suburbs » (PDF)

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Editor’s Note: This piece originally was published on the Guardian’s Sustainable Business website.

I recently returned from Copenhagen, my first time to the Danish capital. Even a three day visit affirms why this city of more than 540,000 residents has received global recognition as a beacon of sustainable development. An incredible 36 percent of all commuting trips to work or school are made by bike along, in many cases, secure bike lanes that protect cyclists from cars and buses. Another 32 percent of city residents either walk or utilize the region's highly-efficient public transportation network of buses and trains.

This kind of sustainable development clearly yields significant environmental benefits. Copenhagen achieved the highest ranking in the 2009 European Green City Index, scoring in the top 10 in all eight categories, from energy efficiency to transport and environmental governance.

Growing green is obviously an environmental imperative. Yet the Copenhagen experience shows that it can be a market proposition as well, with a diverse set of economic and fiscal benefits accruing to cities that are at the vanguard of sustainable development. Cities like Copenhagen, in short, may be inventing a clean economy of place.

Monday Morning, the respected Scandinavian thinktank, recently released a report detailing the effect of building a city that is high in spatial efficiency and rich in transport choices. Some of the benefits are direct and local. Residents who cycle to work or school are healthier, so health care costs decline (by an estimated $380 million a year). Fewer cars on the road means less congestion and fewer accidents, so additional savings are realized.

Yet the big effect from sustainable development may be indirect and global, as specialized firms naturally rise and expand to meet the growing demand for clean services and clean products. Monday Morning's report finds that Copenhagen's clean sector has been a critical contributor to the region's economy in the past decade, with green exports outpacing all other sectors by growing at an astounding 77 percent between 2004 and 2009.

Cities in the U.S. are following suit. Portland, Oregon, is also internationally renowned for its commitment to sustainable development. The Portland metropolis has an expansive public transit system and an urban growth boundary to control development at the urban periphery. The city boasts a green investment fund to provide grants for residential and commercial building projects.

Now the city is striving, like Copenhagen, to reap the economic rewards of sustainable development through business formation, firm expansion, job growth and private investment. In February, Portland released its first regional export plan to double exports over five years by building on the region's distinctive economic and physical attributes. A critical pillar of this strategy involves increasing the export orientation of firms in the burgeoning clean technology sector to serve growing markets in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.

Both Copenhagen and Portland recognize that urbanization is the dominant market-shaping trend of the century. By 2030 it is estimated that China will have one billion residents while India will have 590 million. These nations and others will demand products and services that enable development that is economically supportive, environmentally sensitive and spatially efficient. And those products and services may disproportionately emerge from firms located in cities, in mature economies and rising nations alike, which are first movers on sustainable development.

The economic benefits of sustainable development could be substantial. Last year, my program at Brookings measured the U.S. clean economy at 2.7 million jobs. That means the clean economy has more jobs than fossil-fuel related industries and is nearly twice the size of the biosciences field and 60 percent of the 4.8 million strong IT sector.

The U.S. clean economy is also incredibly diverse (sweeping across five broad categories and 39 separate clusters) and disproportionately located in the nation's top 100 cities and metropolitan areas.

Green architecture and construction services cluster illustrates the potential for growth and the reality of metropolitan concentration. This segment already employs over 56,000 people in the U.S. Some 90 percent of these jobs are located in the top 100 cities and towns (although those communities house only two-thirds of the population). The segment grew by a healthy annual average of 6.4 percent between 2003 and 2010 and includes firms such as Burns and McDonnell Engineering in Kansas City, McKinstry and Co. in Seattle, and Gensler in San Francisco. Conclusion: the clean economy of place constitutes a virtuous cycle between cities, companies, consumers and clusters.

Let me end where I began, in Copenhagen. The city is not resting on its cycling laurels but setting its sights higher, towards achieving a goal of carbon neutrality by 2025. Shakespeare was wrong: all is not rotten in the state of Denmark. Nurturing what is good — and green — embracing it and extending it could provide a platform for economic growth for decades to come.