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Thursday, September 02, 2010
By Stephanie Allen, Project Assistant.
I first heard of the idea of local currency while visiting Ithaca, NY nearly a decade ago when I was in college in New York State. I thought it was a quaint idea for such a supportive community of aging hippies, college students, and professors, but I didn't think much at all about the economics involved. Recently I was talking to two friends from graduate school, and we somehow stumbled into a conversation about local currency. These guys both use...
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects.
A couple posts ago, I betrayed my bias that the quality of a community’s leadership is the ultimate determinant of its current and future success. I mentioned Cincinnati and its confounding malaise despite a wealth of incredible assets. A few days ago I came upon a blog entry from UrbanCincy lamenting an editorial from a mouthpiece of the city’s old-money oligarchy that railed against efforts to build a streetcar line and waterfront park in town....
Thursday, August 26, 2010
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate.
The winners of Phase 2 of the Race to the Top educational reform competition were announced two days ago, and I was very happy to see Georgia on the list. Along with the District of Columbia, the other winning states are Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. In total, the Phase 2 winners were awarded $3.4 billion, which will be distributed over four years. Of that, Georgia is receiving $400...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
By Will Corbin, Project Associate.
Parking on the streets of downtown America can be very stressful. This is one reason why, in Atlanta, I try to take the MARTA train, part of Atlanta’s public transportation system. However, sometimes most of the time, if I am on a strict schedule and need to make a quick visit to a store located in the city, I am forced to drive, due to MARTA’s lack of capacity and unpredictability (which is another entire blog topic in itself!).
Downtown...
Friday, August 20, 2010
By Matthew Tester, Project Associate.
It seems that buses are going the
way of the skinny tie. Except that the return of retro-cool fashion indicates disposable
income while the return of the local bus system as a transit priority indicates
just the opposite.
As we’ve often reported on this
blog recently, local finances are kaput and “Austerity” should be in the
running for Word of the Year 2010. Government jobs and services are being cut
in almost...
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
By Matt Tarleton, Project Associate.
Last Friday, the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) announced results from its 2010 fiscal year project activities. In total, companies invested $3.75 billion across the state, creating 19,462 jobs. This level of job creation was nearly 15 percent higher than the year before. But of course, when you consider that the state lost 56,600 jobs during the 2010 fiscal year (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) you can see...
Friday, August 13, 2010
By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate.
Last month I mentioned the City of Baltimore’s Virtual
Supermarket Program , where residents of neighborhoods without
local grocery stores can pick up fresh groceries at their public library
branch. In Baltimore and throughout the country, libraries are expanding the
resources they collect and services they offer for citizens. Increasingly, the
essential function of a library to connect the public to information and...
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
By Ellen Anderson, Director of Research.
I had the opportunity to attend my first ACCE annual conference last week, which was held in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The conference had solid professional development workshops, best practice exchanges, and fun networking events including an awards dinner and cocktail party and a trip to Miller Park to see a ballgame.
Mac Holladay, our founder and CEO at Market Street, was recently asked by ACCE to pen a cover story on...
Monday, August 09, 2010
By Matthew Tester, Project Associate.
We talk a lot about the virtues of innovation here at Market Street, and recognize – along with most economic analysts – that entrepreneurs and small businesses will drive the bulk of employment growth as America fights to recover from the Great Recession. As typically applied in our world, “innovation” refers to science and technology arenas and is to be nurtured via robust academic research and high-tech incubation space. The importance of...
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects.
Small businesses account for a significant percentage of local job growth. Because of this, economic development programs are increasingly focused on multiple strategies to launch, stimulate and grow smaller firms. Often referred to as “economic gardening” (although that term always calls to mind planting guys/gals in suits in loamy field-rows), the practice of seeding and nurturing start-up enterprises is an essential component of a holistic...
Friday, July 30, 2010
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate.
Earlier today, President Obama delivered a speech on education reform at the National Urban League Centennial Conference. After a few comments on the recovery of our economy over the past 6 months, health care reform, Wall Street reform, and even the Shirley Sherrod debacle, President Obama devoted the bulk of his message to the importance of quality education. One of his quotes is something that we preach around here at Market...
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
By Will Corbin, Project Associate.
During my semester of graduate study abroad in Newcastle, England, I decided to visit a friend of mine who was also studying abroad. My friend was taking classes at the London School of Economics, which is located, of course, in London. This presented a minor issue, because Newcastle is about 300 miles north of London. At an average driving speed of 70mph, it should take a little over four hours from start to finish. Accounting for traffic...
Monday, July 26, 2010
By Matthew Tarleton, Project Associate
This past week I had the pleasure of visiting with Mike
Gaymon and the entire staff at the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce. During
my visit, I tagged along with Mike to his weekly radio appearances. We’ve heard
so much recently about the struggles of traditional media and the rise of new
media. I could digress for pages, but I’ll spare you (just this one time). Suffice
it to say, traditional media isn’t dead. And it shouldn’t be ignored...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
By Ellen Anderson, Director of Research.
A large part of what we do at Market Street is present research to tell stories about communities and translate those stories into real-world economic development strategies that leverage assets and opportunities and address factors that challenge the community’s short and long-term competitiveness. To do this, we examine an exhaustive inventory of community dynamics including demographic trends, economic structure, business climate,...
Thursday, July 15, 2010
By J. Mac Holladay, founder and CEO.
Diversity.
Webster says it means – “the condition of being diverse.” Diverse is defined as “differing from one another – distinct or unlike elements or qualities.” Diversity comes in many forms and descriptions. It is about age, race, ethnicity, lifestyle choice, family makeup, and many more things.
There is no question that our world becomes more diverse every day – in almost every way. Some are frightened by it, while others embrace it. In...
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects.
Today’s blog could easily be a novel; I won’t deny that this subject is done short shrift by a cursory examination of why some cities succeed while others fail. Indeed, there is probably no “magic formula” to illuminate this topic just as the reasons why some people succeed and others don’t cannot be explained away by one or two key moments or traits. However, what has become clear in the two dozen or so communities I’ve worked with...
Thursday, July 08, 2010
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate. When I was in junior high and high school, my mom sent me to various summer camps at Pineywoods Country Life School, Jackson State University, and Alcorn State University. Each of the programs I attended was focused on academic enrichment in STEM subjects: math, chemistry, computer programming, and the like. It was through these programs that I was exposed to how I could use the math I loved so much in practical ways. By the time I got to college, I already...
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
By Will Corbin, Project Associate.
If you are familiar with me or have read my previous blogs, then you know that I am a big proponent of public-private partnerships, especially when it comes to economic and community development. I believe that one of the government’s main responsibilities is to help ensure the social and economic well-being of its citizens. At the same time, however, this task should not fall solely upon the government. In my March 25, 2010 blog post, Governments...
Thursday, July 01, 2010
By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate
Earlier this year, I wrote a post
on a few initiatives and incentives programs aimed at attracting fresher,
healthier grocery options into neighborhoods and areas known as “food deserts.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food deserts as “areas with limited
access to affordable and nutritious food.” Since February, we have seen a
number of new financing and analysis efforts emerge in identifying and
eliminating food...
Friday, June 25, 2010
By Kathy Young, Director of Operations.
Though it seems like summer only just began, Market Street is already looking ahead to an exciting end-of-summer event, the American Association of Chamber Executives (ACCE) annual convention . This year the convention will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and already has hundreds of Chamber professionals from around the country – and world – registered for the four days of peer-to-peer meetings and engaging seminars.
As the national...
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
By Matt Tester, Project Associate.
…is increasingly called a bicycle.
American cities are warming to the idea that bike-sharing systems are a valuable means of generating downtown activity, providing viable alternative transportation, and encouraging healthy living. And this, despite their European roots! Several major cities debuted or announced major downtown systems in 2010, and some recent federal policy changes could continue building bike-sharing momentum.
...
Thursday, June 17, 2010
By Ellen Anderson, Director of Research.
University of Phoenix. Argosy. DeVry. Kaplan. You see their commercials on television and likely see their buildings alongside interstates. These universities and others like them represent the growing market of for-profit colleges. Earlier this year The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the sector’s remarkable growth:
Enrollment in the country's nearly 3,000 career colleges has grown far faster than in the rest of higher...
Monday, June 14, 2010
By Alex Pearlstein, Director of Projects.
In an interesting confluence of events, the 2010 World Cup began the same day the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the United States will soon be a “minority majority” country, with non-whites comprising over 50 percent of our population. Many of these minorities are represented by ethnic groups originating from all countries of the globe. It’s trite to say that the U.S. is a “nation of immigrants,” but it’s true nonetheless. My family emigrated...
Thursday, June 10, 2010
By Ranada Robinson, Project Associate. One of the long-term effects of successful economic development is decreased poverty rates. We know that poverty is the state of having insufficient means to attain necessities such as housing, nutrition, transportation, clothing, etc. Market Street uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau to compute poverty rates for our client communities. Poverty rates help us to ascertain how well a community is doing socioeconomically. They also help to inform new...