sustainable communities magazine- ceos for cities

8/22/2019 Sustainable Communities Magazine- CEOs for Cities

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SustainableCommunities

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Vol 2, No 4 Fall 2012 www.p4sc.org $12

New unding or green retrofts .......................... p. 4

Just add water to create jobs ............................. p. 6

CEOs or Cities makes metrics un ...................... p. 23

Bostons Boom:

Fueled by Innovation


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ALL 2012 SuSTb CmmuTS 23

CEOs for CitiesInnovative ideas showcased at conference on urban issues

bSTSpeakers at the all conerence o CEOs or Cities

emphasized the importance o knowledge, an educated labor

orce and collaborative eorts to encourage innovation and

business start-ups.

CEOs or Cities President Lee isher tied together a vari-

ety o high-level presentations rom a combination o may-

ors and top-level scholars under the theme City o Ideas.

One o the critical lessons was that successul cities no

longer ollow the maxim that people go where the jobs are.

They are guided by the principle that people go to cities

that are attractive to them, and the jobs ollow. In other

words, the most successul cities, including Boston, have

worked hard to appeal to the young, well-educated workers

that todays growth businesses want to employ.

Other speakers emphasized the importance o using

modern technology to measure and monitor metrics o a

citys perormance. Again, the city o Boston is in the lead in

using detailed metrics to nd solutions to problems and in-

crease awareness o dynamics that are not well understood.

CEOs or Cities was the brainchild o Paul Grogan, a

long-time leader in housing and urban revitalization, and

currently CEO o The Boston oundation.

Grogan ounded the organization to ght or the nations

cities in a way that refected the public-private partnershipsthat emerged or community development in the 1970s and

gained momentum in the 80s.

We needed a new national urban organization that

refected what was happening in cities, to refect the local

partnerships that were driving urban revival, he said.

Grogan wrote about many o the cities that ought back

rom the decline o the 60s in a book titled Comeback Cit-

ies: A Blueprint or Urban Neighborhood Revival, which was

published in 2001.

CEOs or cities was seen as an alternative to traditional

urban advocacy groups, which adhered to the old model o

asking or ederal nancial assistance through prescriptive

programs or urban development.

Grogan helped organize the CEOs or Cities conerence in

Boston and assisted with moderating duties.

Asked what he considered the groups most impressive

achievement, Grogan said it is the City Dividends project.This research shows the value to cities o increasing such

things as the rate o college completion or reduction o ve-

hicle miles travelled even by small percentages.

City Dividends calculates the monetary gains the top 51

metros could realize i they increase their college attainment

Experts on one of the panels at the CEOs for Cities conference

Lee Fisher kicks off CEOs for Cities conference in Boston

airos Shen, Director of

Planning, City of Boston

Paul Grogan, CEO of The

Boston Foundation

PHOTO

S:TARA

STURM,CEOSfOR

CITIES
http://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Cities-Blueprint-Neighborhood-Revival/dp/0813339529http://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Cities-Blueprint-Neighborhood-Revival/dp/0813339529http://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Cities-Blueprint-Neighborhood-Revival/dp/0813339529http://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Cities-Blueprint-Neighborhood-Revival/dp/0813339529


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SuSTb CmmuTS ALL 201224

Which cities will scceed?Data compilation by CEOs for Cities points to likely winners

By Alexander Cartwright

San Jose, California

Data is everything in todays battle among cities to besuccessul, green, and attractive to businesses with jobsto oer and taxes to pay. One o the best compilations o

data is City Vitals rom CEOs or cities, not just because it

contains a lot o good inormation but mostly because it puts

it in a clear, understandable context.

The material is in a book titled City Vitals 2.0: Bench-

marking City Perormance by Joe Cortright, senior policy

advisor at CEOS or Cities, Impresa, Inc.

In the report, Cortright benchmarks city perormance in

the our areas most vital to success: Connections, Innova-

tion, Talent, and Your distinctiveness. Connectedness o a

city has to do with behaviors like voting, community involve-

ment, economic integration, transit use, walkability, interna-

tional students, and internet connectivity.

Innovation is measured by things like the number o pat-

ents, venture capital activity, entrepreneurship, and small

business success. Talent is measured by the percentage o

college graduates, the number o creative proessionals, and

other actors.

by one percentage point (The Talent Divi-

dend), reduce VMT by 1 mile per person

per day (The Green Dividend) and reduce

the number o people in poverty (The Op-

portunity Dividend) by one percentage

point.City Dividends is designed to help urban

leaders make the case or pubic policies

that will help raise incomes, encourage citi-

zens to drive less and increase opportuni-

ties or bringing people out o poverty. City

Dividends establishes a ramework or ex-

amining the policies, actions and conditions

that are needed or cities to actually realize

these gains in practice.

It shows there is a nancial benet

to cities to push or these things. It helps

people get a handle on things where the

benets are not readily identiable, Gro-

gan said.Another organizational achievement is

the encouragement o groups o ocials

rom the same city to participate as a clus-

ter in the groups events, Grogan said. It

amplies the power to be infuential and

plant ideas, when people rom the same

town go to meetings together. It refects

how things are getting done.

Carlo Ratti, Director,

SENSEable City Laboratory, a

new research initiative at the

Massachusetts Institute of

Technology

PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMM


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The most unusual item in CEOs list o what makes a city

successul is distinctiveness, which includes something CEOs

calls the weirdness actor. Its best to just quote City Vitals

directly: The unique characteristics o place may be the

only truly deensible source o competitive advantage or re-

gions. In a world o global competition, a strategy o prettymuch the same, maybe cheaper is a recipe or mediocrity

and economic stagnation.

The act that CEOs tried to quantiy this characteristic

is impressive. Its not the sort o thing that lends itsel to

measuring and Ive yet to see anyone else suggest how to do

so. CEOs candidly admits that its measures o distinctiveness

are inherently incomplete. Every city has its own unique

characteristics or which there are ew, i any, statistics, the

report says. CEOs is basically giving people a starting point

to think about this dimension o city lie.

Among the measures o distinctiveness are the ratio o

persons that reported attending a culture event in the past

year to the number o households with high denition televi-sions, the variety o restaurants in the city, and the variety

o internet searches undertaken.

The report also introduces the concept o core measures

o vitality, which look at income, poverty and college attain-

ment within the urban core vs. the entire city. CEOs believes

this is a better way to compare city to city perormance.

So, you are probably wondering where specic cities

stack up in terms o these metrics. To get the ull report, click

here.

But heres a preview on a ew key measurements, includ-

ing the top ve cities in each category.

voting: Measured by the number o votes cast in the

November 2008 presidential election divided by the voting

age population o the metropolitan area, 2008. The highest

scoring cities are:

Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI

Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI

Raleigh-Cary, NC

St. Louis, MO-IL

Jacksonville, L

These cities had scores o 68 to 76 percent. The mean is

60 percent.

nnoatie Cit; Measured by the number o patents issued

per 10,000 employees, 2009. The highest scoring cities are:

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA

Austin-Round Rock, TX

San rancisco-Oakland-remont, CA

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

Rochester, NY

These cities had 22 to 83 patents. The mean is 8.8.

Talented Cit: Measured by the percentage o the metro-politan population 25 years old or older that have completed a

our-year college degree, 2010. The highest scoring cities are:

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV



Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

Raleigh-Cary, NC

These cities had scores o 41 to 47 percent. The mean is

31.6 percent.

yor istinctie Cit: The weirdness index is dened

as the average o the extent to which the metropolitan

areas ten most distinctive consumer behaviors exceed the

national norm or each behavior, 2008. The highest scoring

cities are:



Salt Lake City, UT

Denver-Aurora-Broomeld, CO

Miami-ort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, L

These cities had scores o 6 to 9.1. The mean is 3.4.

GG eissions highest in idwest

The City Vitals report also ranks cities according to

per capita GHG emissions in 2008. While you might

expect Los Angeles to be at the top o the list, its not.Los Angeles is at the bottom.

Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN

Louisville-Jeerson County, KY-IN

Nashville-Davidson-Murreesboro-ranklin, TN

St. Louis, MO-IL

These cities had per capita emissions o 3.2 to

3.4 tons.

At the bottom o the list were the New York, LA,

Seattle, San Jose and Portland metro areas. The mean

or all areas is 2.4 tons o carbon emissions per person

per year.

The unique characteristics of place may

be the only truly defensible source of

competitive advantage for regions. In a world

of global competition, a strategy of pretty

much the same, maybe cheaper is a recipe

for mediocrity and economic stagnation.
http://www.ceosforcities.org/city-vitals/research/city-vitals-2.0-2012/http://www.ceosforcities.org/city-vitals/research/city-vitals-2.0-2012/http://www.ceosforcities.org/city-vitals/research/city-vitals-2.0-2012/http://www.ceosforcities.org/city-vitals/research/city-vitals-2.0-2012/

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