Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

New Brookings Study of Metropolitan Job Location

I see that there is a new study, called Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment, by Elizabeth Kneebone and published in April by the Brookings Institution, that examines the spatial location of jobs in metropolitan areas around the US.  As I read the report, it highlights the real difficulty with achieving serious results in terms of building the green economy within the jurisdictions of cities. 

The report says that among the more than 90 metropolitan areas, only three experienced greater job growth in the city than in the surrounding suburbs.  Those three cities -- Chattanooga, Milwaukee, and Oxnard -- experienced greater job growth in their respective downtown areas.  Virtually all other cities experienced some loss of jobs to areas -- municipalities -- outside of the central city. 

This tells is a lot about the challenges that advocates of sustainable cities have to face in trying build new employment bases -- especially green jobs -- in existing cities.  The implication is that cities will continue to have difficulties reducing their carbon footprints and other environmental impacts as long as people who live in major cities have to increasing leave the city to work.

What is most interesting to me is that, among all of the cities that claim to be pursuing sustainability, Chattanooga and Milwaukee are two cities where sustainability is really about economic development.  So maybe this suggests that to grow the city-based green economic requires a laser-focus on this issue and nothing else.  Just a thought.  let me know what you think.

Challenges in Building a Local Green Economy

I have been thinking a lot lately about the very real challenges that the Obama Administration is going to face as it tries to stimulate the US economy while investing in building a new, green, economy.  I have written an editorial and posted it on the Our Green Cities web site.  Not only is it going to be a challenge to stimulate the economy, but even more so to do it while getting people to understand what a green economy is.  The Obama administration has already accomplished one important thing -- it has changed the dialog from one of globalization of the economy to one of localization of economic growth.  The language has now turned our attention inward -- to worry about economic growth that is place specific. As I say in this editorial, we understand, as Tip O'Neill was fond of saying, that all politics are local. But now we're moving toward an understanding of the economy that might say that economic growth is local. It wasn't too long ago that the idea of economic growth being local rather than global would have sounded ridiculous.  The Obama administration has contributed to a shift in this.  Read my editorial for my thoughts on this.

What makes a "Green Job" Green?

One of my students, Zach Parris, alerted me to a recent article on the CNBC web site called "So What's A Green Job, Anyway?"  The article addresses a variety of issues that skeptics of building a green economy like to raise, and so it is worth reading just for that reason.  Honestly, this article is pretty obtuse and not particularly helpful.  It, for example, never even attempts to offer an operational definition of a "green job," and instead seems satisfied in quoting people who are also confused.  There are plenty of operational definitions available -- if someone is earning a living making a product or providing a service that contributes to decreased pollution, isn't that a green job?  I could go on and on in providing alternative operationalizations, each of which is plausible and defensible.  The article, however, doesn't try to do that, and leaves the reader with the impression that it's all phony baloney.  It isn't.  I would recommend that you take a look at the report issued last fall through the U.S. Conference of Mayors as a starting point for any green jobs discussion.  The report, "Current and Potential Green Jobs in the U.S. Economy," is available online.