ICIC Summit Live: Two Days is Never Enough

We’ve spent the last two days gathering urban leaders from across the nation to discuss the future of our inner city economies. We’ve learned how cities can improve access to capital for small businesses. We heard how Chicago, led by the Civic Consulting Alliance, has formed strategic public-private partnerships to promote economic development. We were informed that the largest remaining barrier to growing the industrial economy is lack of education as to what the sector entails and which skills are needed.

Food? We covered that too. After an inspiring keynote by Kristin Groos Richmond of Revolution Food, we heard a cast of panelists discuss the ways we can grow the emerging food cluster to promote job growth and economic prosperity in our nations’ most distressed locations. Rounding things out, we heard that our inner city economies must not be forgotten about in this age of regionalism, as their assets and needs are often very different than the region as a whole.

While we’ve learned a great deal, the reality is that the conversation about our inner city economies cannot end after two days.

We would like this blog entry to serve as a connection point for all of the conference participants – both in person and the hundreds who joined us online! Please share with us, and with each other:

• Your thoughts on the conference
• How your city is applying the models discussed at Urban 2.0
• Best practices from cities we may not have heard about
• Discussions that we may have overlooked
• Questions for panelists that you weren't able to ask

And of course, if you met someone at Urban 2.0 that you want to get back in touch with, this a forum to do that as well. Here at ICIC, we hope to be the beginning catalyst as part of a longer, ongoing discussion. Only if we attack these challenges together can we truly make an impact on our inner city economies.

Miss part of the conference? Visit www.icic.org/live for forthcoming videos and related presentation materials.

BY Amanda Maher on October 4th, 2011

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