THE FUTURE STARTS HERE

Inner cities are home to 6% of America’s companies and 7% of private sector jobs. They are also home to one-fifth of America’s poverty and nearly one-third of its minority poverty. Inner cities concentrate the potential for economic change: either towards sustainable growth or protracted decline.

Untapped potential. Almost nowhere else are the possibilities for creating value more apparent than in impoverished inner cities. As markets, income density is eight times greater than in the suburbs, yet they are underserved. As business locations, inner cities are strategic, with a greater density of airports, water ports and inter-modal shipping facilities than elsewhere in the country. Labor and land are abundant. Over the next 10 years, vacated building space in U.S. urban areas is projected to be 1 billion square feet – almost exactly the space that growing industrial activities will require. Repurposing urban industrial zones creates jobs while reducing development costs, supply and distribution costs and carbon emissions.

Regional solutions have scant effect on inner city prosperity. Ten years of ICIC data show that economic development doesn’t ripple inward.  On average, a regional economy has to grow by 10% to lift the inner city by 1%. Similarly, a company located in the inner city creates three times more new jobs for inner city residents than the same size business elsewhere in the region.

“Economic inequality raises fundamental challenges to capitalism,” ICIC founder Michael Porter told Bloomberg Businessweek in May, 2010, “and inequality will not be solved until we help residents of disadvantaged communities prosper in the market system. Inner city residents need jobs near their homes that offer good pay and the prospect of long-term employment. These can be created only by business.”

Engaging the private sector. Private sector investment is critical to improving the economic vitality of America's urban neighborhoods and  creating accessible paths to economic prosperity for inner city residents. Rapidly growing firms like the Inner City 100 demonstrate the impact businesses can have on job creation and the revitalization of America's economically distressed areas. From 1999 to 2010, the 607 companies that have made up the Inner City 100 have created more than 71,000 new jobs. 

Working through the private sector, we can drive investment into America's inner cities and create the necessary and needed jobs, income and wealth for inner city residents.