Workforce Development and Smart Growth:
Opportunities for Linking Movements
Translation Paper
#2
Edition
#2
* The Funders’ Network works
to inspire, strengthen, and
expand philanthropic leadership
and funders’ abilities to support
organizations working to
improve communities through
better development decisions
and growth policies. For more
information, visit
www.fundersnetwork.org.
** Good Jobs First (GJF) is a
national resource center
promoting corporate and
government accountability in
economic development and
smart growth for working
families; it provides research,
training, consulting and
communications. Good Jobs
First is based in Washington,
D.C., with project offices in
New York and Chicago. For
more information, visit
www.goodjobsfirst.org.
The Pratt Institute Center for
Community and Economic
Development (PICCED) works
for a more just, equitable, and
sustainable city for all New
Yorkers, by empowering
communities to plan for and
realize their futures. For more
information, visit
www.picced.org.
This second edition was commissioned by the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable
Communities.* It was first written in 2000 by our collaborating authors, Greg LeRoy and Sara
Hinkley of Good Jobs First (GJF), and updated in 2005 by GJF’s Greg LeRoy 1 and Mafruza
Khan2 of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development.** It is the
second updated edition in a series of papers sponsored by the Funders’ Network to translate the
impact of sprawling patterns of development and urban disinvestment on our communities and
environment and to highlight the opportunities that could be created by smarter growth policies
and practices. Other issues addressed in the translation papers include regional equity, air quality,
energy, water, community development, arts, health, biodiversity, children and families,
education, aging, transportation, agriculture, civic participation, and open space.
Abstract
The paper also details the widely varying
T his paper describes the implications of
sprawling patterns of development from
the perspective of workforce development
economic forces that are shaping the
geography of individual industries. For
and organized labor and articulates why example, the same “big box” retailers that
funders who seek to help workers gain draw opposition from rural conservationists
family-supporting skills and jobs should also are also the nemesis of unionized grocery
consider becoming involved in the emerging and warehouse workers. Much subtler are
movement for smarter growth policies and the migrations of manufacturing and health
practices. The paper care work, but both
details how sprawling fuel sprawling
development and
patterns of
development reduce reduce job quality.
opportunity for low- Each sector presents
skill workers and unique opportunities
contribute to the and challenges, but
geographic many of the same
concentration of forces arrayed against
poverty. Indeed, it job development also
argues that unchecked, contribute to sprawl.
sprawl will continue to Also explored is a new
undermine the basic lens on the geography
systems necessary for
of work created by
residents of inner disclosure of
cities and suburbs to company-specific
gain skills and jobs. economic
Conversely, it development
describes how smarter growth policies incentives, complementing existing
and practices can help keep jobs, education, scholarship on public goods such as roads
and training accessible to core-area workers. and sewers. Such information allows the
For purposes of this paper, “core area” refers public to track job relocation and assess the
not only to central cities but also to inner- resulting impact on job access and
ring suburbs and other mature urban areas commuting patterns. Today’s “business
experiencing employment stagnation or climate,” with its premium on skilled labor,
job flight.
clearly argues for a massive reallocation of
© Copyright 2005 by the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
 resources to improve adult-worker skills,
which would disproportionately benefit
core-area workers and create an incentive
for employers to reinvest there.
The paper also posits that organized
labor has a very large stake in the sprawl
debate, and that unions are increasingly aware
of that fact. (For a map of unions’ self-
interests in smart growth, see Talking
to Union Leaders About Smart Growth, at
www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/talking.pdf.
For an analysis of how labor federations work
for urban reinvestment, see Labor Leaders as
Smart Growth Advocates, at
www.goodjobsfirst.org/clc_release.htm).
While unions such as the United Food and
Commercial Workers have long opposed “big
box” retail projects, and the Amalgamated
Transit Union has long advocated for better
public transit, many other unions are starting
What is Sprawl?
Sprawl is the result of public decisions that
cause land use patterns to be characterized by
low-density development, strict separation of
residential and non-residential property, high
spatial separation between jobs and housing,
and auto-oriented land use that
denies commuters a choice about
For the geography of work, sprawl how to get to work. These
means the decentralization of entry- phenomena make most new jobs
level jobs in the manufacturing, inaccessible to workers who rely
wholesale, and retail sectors, moving on public transit; hence, sprawl is
work further from concentrations of associated with increased
low-skilled, unemployed workers. concentrations of poverty in older
areas. For workers who do have
cars, sprawl increases their
dependence on automobiles and
average driving times. Sprawl is also
associated with tax base decline in core areas
and resulting neglect of central city
infrastructure and services, as well as fiscal
strains produced by rapid growth in newly
developing fringe suburbs.
For the geography of work, sprawl means
the decentralization of entry-level jobs in
the manufacturing, wholesale, and retail
2 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
to see a union density/urban density
connection. The national AFL-CIO adopted
a resolution at its December 2001 convention
condemning sprawl and urging its affiliated
unions to weigh-in on the smart growth
debate. As active partners in both regional
workforce investment boards and myriad
workforce development projects, unions are
in a key position to facilitate metropolitan
alliances for equitable urban revitalization.
Finally, this paper observes that a
“community-based regionalism” is emerging
and involves new coalitions, some including
organized labor. It argues that funders have a
critical role to play in linking the smart
growth and workforce development
movements. Navigating the difficult waters of
“new tricks” and “old dogs,” funders should
be looking for promising new approaches as
well as proven coalition players.
sectors, moving work further from
concentrations of low-skilled, unemployed
workers. Incentivized by public funding of
new highways, employer decisions to locate
on the fringe of metro areas, often away
from public transit, are a key cause of the
problem. The lack of affordable suburban
housing and adequate public transportation
in the suburbs effectively cuts central city
residents off from regional labor markets.3
Public agencies seek to address this spatial
mismatch with transportation and housing
programs. Examples include the Job Access
and Reverse Commute Program (JARC),
established under the Transportation Equity
Act for the 21st Century Act (“TEA-21”),
which specifically provided missing
transportation services for Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
recipients and low-income workers to get to
work. The JARC Program includes transit
options to suburban jobs and extended
service in the evenings and weekends for
urban locations as well. During the
reauthorization process of the federal

transporation bill, transit advocates urged
the continuation of the JARC program,
with higher funding levels, and sought
opportunities to replicate the program’s
innovative features on a wider basis. In the
new SAFETEA legislation (signed by
President Bush in August 2005), Congress
provided $852 million over six years for the
JARC program, but allocated the funds to
states for distribution to areas within the
state (i.e., areas over 200,000 in population;
areas with 50,000 to 200,000 in
population; and rural areas), rather than
through a federal discretionary program.
New requirements were added to encourage
more coordination among public, private,
and nonprofit transportation providers and
with certain other federal transit programs.
In addition, the federal matching share was
raised to 80 percent, up from the TEA-21
share of 50 percent. Other efforts to provide
access to jobs for low-income workers
include requiring TANF coordination plans
to include transportation and considering
transportation issues in funding for projects
under the Workforce Investment Act.
Scholars see sprawling patterns of
development as the cumulative result of many
contributing factors, including: some
people’s preference for large-lot/low-density
housing; white flight from urban areas with
minority residents; lack of regional planning;
cities competing for development instead of
cooperating; redlining (or geographic and
racial discrimination by lenders and insurance
companies); crime or perceptions of it;
contaminated land or “brownfields” in core
areas; restrictive suburban zoning that
effectively excludes multi-unit dwellings and
mixed-use development; federal capital gains
tax rules that used to encourage people to buy
ever-larger homes; decades of low gasoline
prices; declining quality of central-city
schools; and massive federal highway
spending coupled with comparatively little
funding for public transportation.
Introduction: What Does
Workforce Development
Have to Do With
Smart Growth?
Ensuring that urban residents have
fair access to good jobs—and the
ability to qualify for them—is the
goal of the workforce development
movement. Advocates for smarter
growth, especially those coming from
an urban equity perspective, also see
workforce development as a central
issue in stabilizing neighborhoods
and stemming urban flight. But
despite these common interests, the
two movements seldom organize
together on these deep systemic links.
At stake is nothing less than the
future of American cities, and recent
trends do not bode well. The
decentralization of manufacturing
and retail employment is a decades-
long trend, but for the last two
decades, about half of U.S.
metropolitan areas have also seen
“edge cities” capture jobs in value-
added services such as finance,
insurance, and real estate—the
traditional “agglomeration
economies” of the Central Business
District (CBD).4
Now, research suggests that new
technology will further favor
exurbs and small cities close to
major metro areas.5 As one survey
concluded: “[T]rends suggest that
non-central business district
portions of many central cities and
their inner suburbs will continue
to be the weakest part of
metropolitan economies for at least
the next two decades and that their
relative competitive position will
get worse without economic
development policies.”6
The Need for Better
Jobs Analysis
To date, environment/open space
and transportation advocates have
largely driven the smart growth
debate. Although the changing
geography of work in America is
integral to the proliferation of
urban sprawl, the issue of jobs and
workforce development is an under-
developed aspect of the sprawl
analysis.
The movement for smarter growth
policies and practices would be
strengthened by a better jobs
analysis and leadership from those
who understand current trends in
workforce development. Left alone,
environmentalists and other
stakeholders might define the jobs
agenda in ways that are not in the
best interests of those who have
been isolated from new
opportunities created by growth. For
example, strategies driven only by a
desire to limit suburban growth and
save open space could actually harm
core-area residents by fueling
gentrification and displacement.
Similarly, unions that still view
“smart growth” as “no growth in
sheep’s clothing” need to review new
evidence that indicates that smarter
growth real estate development
policies actually create more
construction jobs than sprawling
patterns of development. On the
other hand, if development
strategies include explicit ways to
target and link skills-development
and job creation to workers who
need them most, inner-city
neighborhoods can be stabilized,
the tax base for schools can be
preserved, and transit can remain a
viable commuting choice—a pro-
worker, pro-environment solution.
Workforce Development and Smart Growth 3
 That pessimistic outlook is driven by the
spatial mismatch between jobs and
unemployment and increasingly by the
growing skills mismatch. With 40 percent of
jobs created between 1998 and 2008
projected to require at least an associate’s
degree, and low-skill jobs continuing to
suffer long-term wage declines, core-area
workers with insufficient skills become ever
less able to obtain family-wage incomes.7
The cumulative result is a long-term trend
towards greater concentration of poverty in
core areas, disproportionately affecting
families of color, as the growth of good jobs
moves ever further away from the workers
who need them most. Especially for low-
skill workers and those leaving welfare,
proximity to jobs matters.8
Unless this flight of jobs, residents, and tax
base is reversed, urban workforce
development efforts can only
amount to swimming upstream.
Without the tax base for adequate
Without the tax base for
education and training, and without
adequate education and training,
access to a healthy, growing jobs base,
and without access to a healthy,
core-area families will remain trapped
growing jobs base, core-area
in poverty.
families will remain trapped in
poverty. Efforts to facilitate
reverse commuting, such as
JARC, are important, but such
projects can hardly match the sheer scale of
the sprawl trend.
How Sprawl Undermines
Basic Workforce
Development Systems
In the same way that foundation grants
cannot take the place of America’s social
welfare system, philanthropy likewise cannot
replace the basic public systems that prepare
workers to compete for good jobs. But by
promoting smarter growth policies and
practices, funders can address those systemic
problems by shoring-up the tax base for
public schools, community colleges,
vocational education, and other adult
education programs such as the Graduate
Equivalency Degree (GED), English as a
Second Language (ESL), and adult literacy.
4 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
Healthy public schools are the primary
foundation of successful workforce
development. But because schools are typically
the service that needs the most dollars from
local tax revenues, core-area schools suffer
disproportionately when sprawling patterns of
development erode the core-area tax base. As a
result, the most fundamental work preparation
program, kindergarten through 12th grade, is
the public service most vulnerable to sprawl.
When core communities are disinvested and
suffer tax-base erosion, schools suffer in
many ways: class sizes grow; amenities are
eliminated; teacher salaries lag behind
regional averages (making it hard to attract
teaching talent); and capital improvements
and maintenance are deferred. Families that
are able to leave (disproportionately white)
then respond rationally (in economic terms)
and move to higher tax-base suburbs with
healthier schools.
The loss of such families causes further
harm to core schools: it makes the student
body less diverse; it may cost schools
privately-initiated activity such as in-class
enhancements or extracurricular activities;
and it harms home values, which in turn
means either less property tax revenue or
higher rates for families that stay. The
resulting degradation of education leaves
core-area graduates less attractive to
employers and becomes one more “push”
for companies to leave, often relocating in a
sprawling way.
A declining tax base creates a systemic web of
problems for city governments that harm
every kind of remedial adult workforce
development strategy. It creates pressure to
reduce public services and defer infrastructure
maintenance; it lowers the municipal credit
rating and raises borrowing costs; and it
forces tax rates to go up, which in turn drives
more businesses and homeowners away.
Higher transportation costs caused by the
resulting spatial mismatch divert more
resources from other household needs,
making transportation the second highest
cost item for the average household, after
housing. Auto dependence disproportionately
affects the poor and the working poor. It is
estimated that households in the lowest
income quintile spend 40 percent of their
budgets on transportation.9
Fewer businesses mean fewer local job
opportunities for workers, fewer employers
to which training programs can be attached,
fewer role models for young workers, and
greater segregation by income. Even though
most funding for adult training programs is
not reliant on the local tax base, when
training occurs in a neighborhood that lacks
job growth, the new connections to work
actually happen somewhere else.
The Jobs and
Geography Challenge
The challenges faced by job practitioners
are daunting. In many cases, the flight of
workplaces to suburban, exurban and even
rural areas is a major obstacle—the same
problem opponents of sprawling
development face. The following sections
detail how the geography of work is
changing in selected sectors of the
U.S. economy.
Manufacturing
Factory employment has dropped sharply
since 2000, from more than 18 million to a
little more than 14 million as of mid-2005,
or barely 10 percent of the overall U.S.
workforce, as trade liberalization has taken
effect and the U.S. trade deficit has ballooned
to record levels. Besides migrating offshore,
manufacturers migrate to suburbs and exurbs
for the same “push” reasons as other
businesses (e.g., crime, taxes, and services),
and for industry-specific reasons such as
production processes which favor “large
footprint” single-story plants, lack of available
urban space due to development and/or land
contamination, union avoidance, and access
to younger workers with lower benefit costs.
But U.S. manufacturing jobs continue to
generate weekly earnings about 20 percent
higher than non-manufacturing private-
sector jobs.10
Factory labor costs can be higher in the
suburbs, but they are of declining
importance. Due to trade liberalization,
most labor-intensive manufacturing has
been relocated to low-wage foreign
countries. Much of the remaining
production has been automated with the
proliferation of microprocessing
technologies such as computer numerically
controlled machine tools. The result: unit
labor costs in U.S. manufacturing are
virtually flat since the mid-1980s11 and skills
matter more than ever for workers seeking
factory jobs.
Besides migrations within regions, some
manufacturing sectors are undergoing
massive geographic realignments, such as
the new auto belt with more than 450 parts
and assembly plants built since the mid-
1980s, mostly in rural Kentucky, Tennessee,
southern Indiana and Ohio, Alabama,
Mississippi, and South Carolina. Such
plants are overwhelmingly located in areas
without public transit access. Many have
been found to have workforces in which
minorities are underrepresented, and a few
of the foreign-owned “transplant” auto
assembly plants have been charged with
employment discrimination, such as
defining recruitment territories that
excluded urban areas with
minority populations.12
The mobility of manufacturing capital is a
strong argument for strategies that build
and reinforce a company’s loyalty to the
community. Examples include the “cluster”
strategy now pursued in many regions,
emulating the northern Italian model
popularized in the 1980s. This strategy
seeks to build regional linkages by helping
all firms in a given sector get better at non-
competitive activities such as training,
quality control, or export promotion.
Chances for success are improved by
targeting industries that tend to remain
close to cities, such as printing and
publishing, some food processing, and some
high-tech sectors (such as the medical
instruments sector in the Twin Cities) that
have close ties to research and development
facilities. Two of the most active employer
groups promoting regional policies for jobs,
housing, and transit are the Silicon Valley
Workforce Development and Smart Growth 5
 Manufacturing Group in Santa Clara
County, Calif., and Chicago Metropolis
2020 (which includes many of the region’s
largest manufacturers).
There have been numerous efforts since the
1980s for industrial retention; labor-
management training projects such as the
Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership
also reinforce geographic ties. Yet the sharp
decline in factory employment is a serious
impediment to such partnerships, as layoffs
force unions and communities to cope with
dislocated workers instead of planning for
future skills needs.
Retail/Wholesale
Anti-sprawl campaigns focusing on Wal-
Mart and other “big box” retailers have
received extensive media attention and are a
strong example of the potential for coalition
work between unions and advocates for
smarter growth. These retailers can threaten
rural lands and small-town merchants.
Typically accessible only by auto, they
increase congestion and replace shops
accessible by transit, reducing shopping
opportunities for people without cars.
Labor activists have opposed such retailers
because they undermine unionized jobs.
Many grocery chains are at least partly
unionized, making food retailing a bright spot
in a notoriously low-wage sector. The retail
sector employs more than 15 million workers,
but the average retail job is part-time (average
workweek at 29 hours), with very low average
weekly earnings of $381.13 Unionized grocery
workers (about one in five) earn almost a third
more than their non-unionized counterparts.
Unionized workers also receive an even bigger
fringe-benefit premium; the average
contribution to employee health insurance
premiums is 150 percent higher for union
members than for retail food industry workers
who are not.14 Indeed, the issue of health care
costs provoked a very long strike by the
United Food and Commercial Workers at
three grocery chains in Southern California
over the winter of 2003-2004, and the
settlement there is affecting grocery contracts
nationwide. The chains claimed they needed
6 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
concessions because Wal-Mart had announced
its intention of aggressively entering the
region’s market. The pattern is similar
elsewhere; most unionized grocery jobs are in
urban chains, facing market-share loss as big-
box chains penetrate metro areas from the
exurbs inward.
Retail jobs—union or not—merit the
attention of urban activists because of their
disproportionate role as a source of jobs for
low-skill workers. The loss of core-area retail
jobs may correlate more directly with
increases in poverty than the decline in other
kinds of jobs.15 Because of their importance to
low-skill workers, retail jobs’ quality is of
particular significance. In a recent analysis of
several major retail projects subsidized by the
city of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Alliance
for a New Economy (LAANE) and the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
found that more than half of the jobs paid
wages too low to keep a family of three off of
public assistance.16
Developments in wholesaling also present
an opportunity for coalition building.
Although it provides only a third as many
jobs (5.7 million) as retailing, wholesaling
has substantial unionization and better
wages, averaging $686 per week. Generally
tied to urban areas but able to locate on the
fringe, warehouses locate for cheap land and
interstate access.
In recent years, a hyper-efficient method of
grocery-warehousing known as “cross-
docking” has arrived from Europe. Based
upon a system of huge regional warehouses,
located in exurban areas close to interstate
highways, cross-docking allegedly favors
suburban stores (which are able to purchase
large shipments with the lowest shipping
costs) and harms inner-city stores and their
shoppers.17 In a model campaign in the
Buffalo, N.Y., area in 1996, a Teamsters
local formed a coalition with inner-city
churches, civic leaders, and merchants to
win a “code of conduct” with a major
grocery holding company. The agreement
reduced the impact of cross-docking on
both workers and consumers.
Health Care
Health care employs more than 12 million
workers, and access to hospitals and clinics
is critical to a viable neighborhood. In some
core areas, health care becomes the largest
employer by default. But inner cities have
been disproportionately affected by hospital
closures. Those shutdowns are driven by
families lacking insurance coverage (who are
more heavily concentrated in core areas),
and by managed care and Medicaid
reimbursement cutbacks. Indeed, some
hospitals reduce their intake of uninsured
emergency patients when they relocate off
of the public transit grid. Combined with
outsourcing of many support services, the
effect has been to drive more health care
dollars—and good job opportunities—away
from urban cores.
One of the most promising sectoral projects
is in home care and other “direct care”
services that primarily benefit elderly and
disabled persons who lack mobility and
whose geographic density makes it possible
for one provider to serve several clients.
Bronx-based Cooperative Home Care
Associates, a worker-owned cooperative,
currently employs more than 780 women of
color, more than 98 percent of whom were
formerly dependent on public assistance or
unemployed. Medicare reimbursement
cutbacks and Medicaid constraints,
however, continue to constrain job quality.
The model has been replicated by the
nonprofit Paraprofessional Healthcare
Institute (PHI) in urban Philadelphia and
suburban New Hampshire. The
Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute has
worked with related health care training
programs in urban Detroit and rural
Arkansas, and is working with home care
agencies in New York City and nursing
homes in New England, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, and New York.18
Hotel, Restaurant, Gaming, Security
and Janitorial
Home to some of the nation’s fastest-
growing job titles, these sectors are
overwhelmingly low-wage except when
unionized, which is only in some urban
cores, airport areas, gaming centers, and
amusement parks. Unionization rates and
therefore job quality in these sectors have
suffered with the proliferation of edge cities
and suburban office parks and hotels.
In a few cities, such as San Francisco and
Las Vegas, the Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees union has forged
very successful joint training programs with
employers that enable workers to develop
lifelong skills and enable hotels to provide
premium service. In both cities, the union
has a high rate of density. The Service
Employees International Union’s “Justice
for Janitors” campaign has newly enabled
workers in cities such as Denver,
Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, Calif.,
to gain better wages and benefits, and it is
also organizing workers in some suburbs.
Nevertheless, the big picture is that the
dispersion of the hospitality industry and
office building work means that these jobs
are both less accessible to inner-city
residents and less likely to be unionized.
Construction
The construction industry and its unions
are often, like developers, conservative
players in land use debates. They are also
politically active about public infrastructure
funding, including highway projects. So
although it employs only 7.2 million people
(with high average weekly wages of $752),
the construction industry and its unions
have a disproportionately large role to
play in addressing both sprawl and
workforce development.
Advocates for smarter growth have
historically failed to woo the building
industry and trades with a positive jobs
argument for better decisions about growth
and development. Yet a new study by Good
Jobs First provides evidence that smart
growth development actually increases the
number of construction jobs. For example,
more compact building styles (townhouses
instead of single-family homes, multi-story
retail instead of single-story) use more labor
than sprawling forms. Metropolitan areas
Workforce Development and Smart Growth 7
 with growth management policies in place
show much higher rates of construction
activity per new residents than “business as
usual” areas, especially due to higher levels
of rehabilitation work. And a “fix it first”
agenda for infrastructure such as roads uses
more labor, especially because it does not
involve buying land and surveying it and
engineering it for new rights of way.19
The embryonic “back to the city”
construction trend in some core areas
threatens to gentrify inner-city
neighborhoods and dislocate current
residents. Therefore, efforts to recruit more
people of color and women into the
building trades merit attention and support.
Positive examples include the
Apprenticeship Opportunities Project
(AOP) in Seattle20 and the Good Jobs!
Partnership in Connecticut.
Education and Other Public Services
Government accounts for 21.7 million jobs
(including 14 million city and county
workers) and it has historically been a source
of less-discriminatory work opportunity and
skills development for urban workers. But by
many measures, sprawling development also
is undermining these jobs in core areas.
The erosion of property tax revenues, as
outlined above, undermines teaching jobs.
The result is regional inequities in teacher
salaries, class size and student performance.
All of the other public service jobs that make
cities attractive places to live—park
maintenance, public safety, fire protection,
sanitation, and infrastructure maintenance—
become subject to cutbacks and job
degradation when sprawling development
erodes the urban tax base. The results: service
cutbacks, deferred maintenance, and pressure
for privatization. Sometimes, the media
spotlight hot-button examples such as
perilous 911 emergency-response times.
These reports, in turn, fuel the urban exodus.
Transit jobs are undermined as most new
job growth occurs off the transit grid,
reducing ridership and forcing cities to cut
service, reduce crew sizes, and consider
privatization. The federal transportation act
8 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
for 1998-2003, TEA-21, grants cities
greater flexibility on spending for transit
and highways, but if job growth is not on
the grid, transit systems cannot capture
economies of scale needed for reinvestment
and expansion. A recent 50-state survey of
economic development subsidy programs
by Good Jobs First found that not one
single state effectively coordinates its
economic development spending with
transportation planning.21 That is, even
though the average state today has 30
different economic development incentive
programs, not one even encourages—much
less requires—that the jobs being subsidized
are accessible to workers who cannot afford
to own a car.
As businesses struggle to attract workers in
congested metro areas, some are voting with
their feet. BellSouth’s decision in 2000 to
relocate 1,500 Atlanta-area jobs to three
MARTA stations received significant media
attention.22 In 2001, Chicago Metropolis
2020, a business-civic association created by
the elite Commercial Club, organized 104
area businesses to endorse the “Metropolis
Principles.” These principles state that when
relocating or expanding new facilities,
signatory companies will avoid suburbs that
practice exclusionary zoning or have poor
public transit access.23 The Metropolis
Principles are, in effect, reverse redlining.
Signatories include: Allstate Corporation;
Bank One Corporation; Bank of America,
Illinois; BP Amoco; Goldman Sachs Group,
LP; Loyola University Medical Center;
McDonald’s Corporation; McKinsey and
Company; Northwestern Memorial
Hospital; Deloitte & Touche; and Ernst &
Young LLP.
Economic Development
Subsidies: A New Lens on the
Geography of Jobs
Most scholarship linking public dollars to
sprawl focuses on public goods such as
roads, schools, and sewers. Now, thanks to
grassroots reform efforts by the Minnesota
Alliance for Progressive Action, Maine
Citizens Leadership Fund, and Citizens for
Economic Opportunity in Connecticut,
and to bipartisan reforms in Ohio, those
states have disclosure systems that are
beginning to provide data on the
geographic distribution of company-specific
economic development subsidies, including
corporate relocations within metro regions.
Minnesota’s economic development subsidy
disclosure system asks companies to report
when a deal involves a corporate relocation;
dozens of relocations have been recorded. But
the state’s legislature has never asked the
Department of Economic Development to
analyze the data to see if subsidies are fueling
sprawl. (A forthcoming Good Jobs First study
will examine several dozen subsidized Gopher
State relocations). Maine’s disclosure form
simply asks if the deal involves a relocation.
But the state’s data appear less meaningful
(when translating their results to other
regions), since the state has only one
medium-sized metro area. Connecticut’s three
state agencies involved with providing
incentives to businesses write annual reports
that include relocation data. The reports can
be obtained by filing a Freedom of
Information request.
Ohio’s Enterprise Zone Reports provide
company and location-specific data for deals
involving relocation and gives the status of
the request as well.24 Although the state of
Ohio has never analyzed the relocation data,
a nonprofit research group, Policy Matters
Ohio, has looked at the Zone program
generally and its findings are very disturbing
from the perspective of sprawl and inner-city
revitalization. It found that jobs and
investment attributed to Ohio’s zones are
more likely to go to higher-income school
districts than lower-income districts. Indeed,
five times as much real property investment
and twice as many jobs have gone to the
highest-income districts, compared to the
lowest-income districts in the program.25
Surveys that ask employers why they
migrate from core areas to suburbs typically
find that “push” factors dominate the list,
such as crime, taxes, declining city services,
or lack of land for expansion. Among the
few “pull” factors usually cited are suburban
economic development incentives (e.g.,
land write-downs, property tax abatements,
tax increment financing, or low-interest
industrial development bonds).
Yet the role of such subsidies has been little
studied by either academics or the media.
What evidence does exist is disturbing, such
as an analysis of Small Business
Administration loans in the Chicago area
that found wealthier, outlying areas getting
a disproportionate share of loan guarantees,
and a Kansas City Star exposé
that found wealthy suburbs
A 2003 Good Jobs First study, the most
using incentives to pirate
recent on the subject, found that laws
employers from core areas.
governing economic development
“Created to combat sprawl, tax
incentive programs, such as state
breaks now subsidize it,” the
enterprise zones and tax increment
Star concluded. 26
financing, have been weakened in
A 2003 Good Jobs First study,
many states and no longer meet their
the most recent on the subject,
original goals of reducing poverty and
found that laws governing
blight.27 In many cases, in fact, they
economic development
end up subsidizing economic
incentive programs, such as
development in affluent areas.28
state enterprise zones and tax
increment financing, have been
weakened in many states and no
longer meet their original goals
of reducing poverty and blight.27 In many
cases, in fact, they end up subsidizing
economic development in affluent areas.28
Another 2000 study from Good Jobs First
found that the Twin Cities suburb of Anoka,
Minn., has made aggressive use of tax
increment financing in a way that has fueled
sprawl. Anoka offered free land to lure 29
companies to relocate or expand there; all
came from within the Twin Cities region,
and nearly all from closer to the core. Fifteen
came from Minneapolis and its inner-ring
suburbs. Altogether, about 1,600 jobs were
relocated, and the net effect was to make the
jobs less accessible to people of color, low-
income households, and families receiving
public assistance. More than 70 percent of
the relocated jobs had been accessible by
public transit, but in Anoka, the jobs are no
longer transit-accessible.29 Policy solutions
include “location-efficient incentives,” or a
rule that to get a development subsidy in the
Workforce Development and Smart Growth 9
 future, a project site would have to be
transit-accessible. That could steer more jobs
onto the transit grid and increase suburban
support for better transit.
For funders who support inner-city access
to good jobs, this sprawl analysis offers a
new organizing blueprint: follow the
(economic development) money.
After a Good Jobs First study, A
All too often, public dollars follow
Better Deal for Illinois, detailed
private investment, rather than leverage
two huge cases of state-
it; a fuller documentation of that history
subsidized sprawl, advocates
would help build a consensus for
there—including Chicago
smarter geographic targeting of
Metropolis 2020 and Citizen
incentive dollars.
Action/Illinois—began
advocating for proposed
legislation that would target
development subsidies to areas
with an adequate supply of affordable
housing and job access via public transit.
There is also growing synergy between the
movement for smarter growth and local
organizing campaigns for living wages and
Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs).
More than 40 living wage ordinances extend
beyond private contractors performing public
services to employers receiving development
subsidies.30 And LAANE, after winning that
city’s living wage law, has pioneered the use of
Community Benefits Agreements to hold
developers accountable for specific benefits
such as first-source hiring with living wages,
affordable housing, and open space. The
organizing model has since been replicated in
San Jose, Calif., Milwaukee, Wis.,
and Denver.31
Opportunities for Funders
Policies and Research to
Deter Sprawl and Promote
Urban Workforce Development
Research
There are several promising policy and
research initiatives that would promote
smarter growth policies and practices and
10 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
equitable access to good jobs.32 First, as a
base-constituency builder, both movements
need more research on job creation
generated by smart growth policies. The Jobs
are Back In Town by Good Jobs First, is to
the authors’ knowledge the first study that
begins to provide evidence that smarter
growth policies and practices do not reduce
the number of construction jobs—that it is
not “no growth in sheep’s clothing.”
Intuitively, many advocates agree that urban
revitalization can be a terrific job-generator.
But there are precious few numbers.
Also needed is more analysis of subsidized jobs
and sprawl. Using state open records laws,
scholars could create a fuller picture of the
historical geography of economic
development spending. For example, one
study in the late 1980s found that fully one-
fourth of a New York state program’s low-
interest loans went to just one county on Long
Island, one of the state’s most prosperous
areas.33 All too often, public dollars follow
private investment, rather than leverage it; a
fuller documentation of that history would
help build a consensus for smarter geographic
targeting of incentive dollars.
Policies
Policies are needed within the economic
development profession that mirror
emerging smart growth best practices on
land use and transportation. For example,
“location-efficient incentives” would grant a
development subsidy to companies only
when they locate on a public transit grid.
Such a rule would boost transit-oriented
development and generate new political
support for transit in suburbs; both
outcomes would make more employers
accessible as workforce
development partners.34
Finally, there is a major emerging issue that
favors both smart growth and workforce
development: the rapidly-shifting “business
climate” debate. Due to the aging of the
Baby Boom generation, the growth rate of
the U.S. labor force is plummeting. The
growth rate this decade (0.8 percent) is
already about half the rate of population
growth and less than a third that of the
gross domestic product. That is, far fewer
net new workers are competing for jobs
than in previous decades, and the number is
projected to continue to decline for two
more decades and then flat line at just 0.2
percent a year. This explains why the 2001-
2004 jobless recovery has not resulted in a
much higher unemployment rate, and in
the long run, it means chronically tight
labor markets. From an economic
development viewpoint, those regions with
plenty of skilled labor will be the winners.
This new reality is a strong argument for a
massive reallocation of resources away from
subsidies such as corporate income tax
credits and property tax abatements (which
do nothing to create more skilled labor but
do harm school funding) and toward
workforce development programs that will
produce more skilled labor: K-12,
Graduate Equivalency Degrees, English as a
Second Language, adult literacy, and more
intensive assistance for workers leaving
welfare. It also strongly suggests that states
and cities ought to use all non-training
incentives as “carrots” by adopting job
quality standards to encourage companies
to adopt “high road” practices such as
dedicating at least 2 percent of payroll to
life-long skills training and career ladders.
Many foundations support school reform
and training projects targeted to
disadvantaged areas. If a massive
reallocation of public resources occurs,
targeted to the neediest workers, it would
disproportionately benefit core-area
workers. That would create a substantial
incentive for employers to reinvest or
relocate in or near the core area to gain
access to a new supply of qualified labor. By
making this “business climate” issue-link,
foundations can promote joint work
between the workforce development and
smart growth movements that will buttress
school reform efforts as well.
New Approaches and Proven Players
The most successful efforts to build regional
movements for smarter growth policies and
practices will combine new approaches and
proven players. By new approaches, we
mean that traditional, “turf-based”
community organizing that confines itself
to set neighborhood boundaries cannot
convene regional dialogues. Nor can
regional organizations such as planning
councils play such a role if they do not
move beyond their narrow traditional
public-sector audiences.
The challenge is to build regional organizing
models that identify the full range of
necessary players in a metro coalition and
then challenge those players to escape their
historical balkanization by geography, race,
class, and sector. Such models require a
regional analysis of the sprawl problem
informed by the specific self-interests of the
various groups, which explains how sprawling
development harms them and how smarter
growth policies and practices could help
them. It is more than casting an image of
sprawl like a Rorschach ink blot into which
each viewer sees her own demon; it means
detailing the many aspects of sprawl and
concretely connecting them to specific
constituencies’ self-interests.
Yet a good analysis is hardly enough. When
considering support, funders should look

“Cool Cities” in Michigan

In September 2003, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm asked more than 250 of the
state’s mayors to identify ways to make Michigan’s cities more attractive by convening
local “cool cities” advisory groups. The announcement came after the U.S. Census
Bureau announced that more than 33,000 young adults left southeast Michigan
between 2000 and 2002.35 The state’s population of 25 to 34-year olds dropped by
200,000 or 13.5 percent in the 1990s, twice the national average.36

Workforce Development and Smart Growth 11

 for organizations that have an established percent have lobbied state or local
record of successful collaboration. That legislatures to preserve or expand mass
means groups that have a history of being transit operating budgets; 66 percent have
inclusive, generous, flexible, and focused on lobbied to increase funding for the
outcomes rather than aggrandizement. rebuilding of aging infrastructure; 42
Groups that do not practice such habits will percent have lobbied for more funding to
not be able to co-convene a broad regional clean up brownfields; and 48 percent have
coalition, no matter how insightful they are. sponsored or participated in affordable
Because regionalism implies new housing construction.37
relationships between players who often
Under John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO has made
have not actively coalesced before, funding
genuine strides towards increasing labor’s
regional efforts implies tensions between
presence in economic development, including
those players. By knowing who has a
reshaping the AFL-CIO Working for
successful history of collaboration and by
America Institute to promote “high-road”
sending signals to others that an obligatory
regional partnerships among unions,
element of any work plan is a deliberate
employers, community groups, and the
effort to break down past barriers, funders
public sector. Several of these partnerships
can help to shape the metropolitan culture
have received significant foundation support.
necessary to win smart growth victories.
At its December 2001 convention, the
Finally, funders should consider organized
AFL-CIO adopted a resolution denouncing
labor as a potential partner in the smart
sprawl and urging union leaders to get
growth debate. A 2003 survey of labor
involved in coalitions for smarter growth.
federation leaders (mostly heads
The resolution is consistent with the AFL-
of metro labor councils) by Good
CIO’s push to shed its traditional insularity.
Unions are urban institutions, and smart injustices and environmental
Jobs First finds that they all see
Central labor councils and local unions
growth—when it focuses on social equity harm from sprawl and they have across the country are becoming more
and access to good jobs—is right in sync all advocated for urban involved in economic development issues,
with labor’s historical mission.38
living wage campaigns, and coalitions with
reinvestment policies that have
community and religious organizations that
cumulatively come to be called
address such diverse issues as affordable
smart growth. For example: 82
housing and immigrants’ rights.
percent believe there is a
mismatch between where most of the new On the foundation side, the Neighborhood
jobs are being created and where most Funders Group’s Working Group on
affordable housing is located; 80 percent Organized Labor and Community has an
believe that air pollution is a growing public ongoing dialogue with labor and many of
health problem; 80 percent believe that some its members support projects initiated by or
suburbs in their metro area use exclusionary associated with unions. Unions are urban
zoning; 76 percent believe that their regional institutions, and smart growth—when it
infrastructure systems do not treat older areas focuses on social equity and access to good
fairly compared to newer areas; and 74 jobs—is right in sync with labor’s historical
percent believe that the property tax system is mission.38
not fair to all cities in the region.
Acting on their beliefs, the surveyed labor
leaders have advocated for smarter growth
policies they deem good for their members:
88 percent have lobbied for more funding
to repair and rehabilitate existing schools;
82 percent have helped fight a “big box”
retail project such as a Wal-Mart; 66

12 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities

 Conclusion
Metropolitan decentralization, as this paper
shows, undermines basic workforce
development systems when core communities
are disinvested by the flight of jobs, residents,
and tax base to the fringe. Without the tax
base for adequate education and training and
without access to jobs, core-area families will
continue to be trapped in geographically-
concentrated areas of poverty without
adequate opportunities.
By drawing on trends that are shaping the
geography of selected industries, this paper
also highlights that the same forces that
contribute to sprawling patterns of
development also work against job
development. Similarly, new scholarship
indicates that economic development
incentives also serve to fuel sprawling
development and reduce access to jobs by
taking jobs away from the core to
outlying areas.
The paper shows how smarter growth
policies that help keep jobs, education, and
training accessible to core-area workers can
be instrumental in combating sprawling
patterns of development that undermine
basic workforce development systems and
working families. Funders can play a critical
role in linking the movement for smarter
growth with the workforce development
movement and ensuring that stakeholders
such as organized labor are also included in
these new coalitions.

Endnotes
1
Greg LeRoy is executive director of Good Jobs First and co-author, with Sara Hinkley, of the first
edition of this paper, Opportunities for Linking Movements: Workforce Development and Smart
Growth, released by the Funders’ Network in June 2000. He can be reached by e-mail at
goodjobs@goodjobsfirst.org.
2
Mafruza Khan is associate director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental
Development. She was formerly associate director of the corporate research project and senior
analyst at Good Jobs First. She can be reached by e-mail at mkhan@pratt.edu.
3
Bruce Katz and Katherine Allen, Help Wanted: Connecting Inner-City Job Seekers with Suburban Jobs,
Brookings Institution, Fall 1999.
4
Elvin K. Wyly, Norman J. Glickman, and Michael L. Lahr, “A Top 10 List of Things to Know
About American Cities,” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Vol. 3, No. 3,
1998 (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).
5
An exurb is defined as a region or settlement that lies outside a city and usually beyond its suburbs
that often is inhabited chiefly by well-to-do families and/or famers.
6
Robert D. Atkinson, “Technological Change and Cities,” Cityscape, op cit, p. 154.
7
Douglas Braddock, “Occupational employment projections to 2008,” Monthly Labor Review,
November 1999, pp. 51-77.
8
Paul Ong and Evelyn Blumenberg, “Job access, commute and travel burden among welfare
recipients,” Urban Studies, January 1995. Ong and Blumenberg found that among Los Angeles
welfare recipients, new-job wages actually declined with longer commutes, contrary to the pattern of
other workers. W.W. Goldsmith and E.J. Blakely, “Separate Places: The Changing Shape of the
American Metropolis,” Chapter 4 of Separate Societies, 1992, Temple. Christopher J. Mayer, “Does
Location Matter?” New England Economic Review, May/June 1996, pp. 26-40.
9
Alliance for a New Transportation Charter/Surface Transportation Policy Project, Moving Towards a
New Transportation Charter, 2002.

Workforce Development and Smart Growth 13

 Endnotes (cont’d)
10
Calculated from data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Data analyzed by Jeff Chapman, Economic Analyst, Economic Policy Institute,
Washington, D.C.
11
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Unit Labor Costs in Manufacturing, National Currency Basis in 14
Countries or Areas, 1950-1998.” Labor-intensive production that needs to remain proximate to
markets, such as meat and poultry, remains in rural and small-city areas for cheaper labor.
12
A 1988 study by University of Michigan professors Robert Cole and Donald Deskins of three early
transplants—Honda, Nissan, and Mazda—along with 51 Japanese auto parts plants, found that African
American workers were under-represented at virtually every one of the 54 plants. For example, at Honda’s
Marysville, Ohio, plant, they found that blacks comprised 10.5 percent of the available workforce, but
only 2.8 percent of those employed. Various plants of these and other such firms have agreed to
settlements on race and/or sex discrimination allegations, most recently Mitsubishi’s plant in
Bloomington, Ill. “Honda to pay 377 women and blacks for hiring bias,” Los Angeles Times, March 24,
1988. “Japanese rapped on black jobs; Transplant hiring called below par,” Automotive News, August 29,
1988.
13
All employment and wage statistics cited here and below are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at
www.bls.gov as accessed in June 2005.
14
Vicky Lovell et al, The Benefits of Unionization for Workers in the Retail Food Industry, Institute for
Women’s Policy Research, 2002.
15
See, for example, Devajyoti Deka, “Job decentralization and central-city well-being: an empirical
study with sectoral data,” Urban Affairs Review, November 1998.
16
Paul More et al, Who Benefits from Redevelopment in Los Angeles? An Evaluation of Commercial
Redevelopment Activities in the 1990s, UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education and Los
Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, March 1999, p. iii.
17
Gordon McClelland, Royal Ahold and Cross-Docking: A Study of the True Cost of Supermarket
Industry Restructuring, Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, December
1995.
18
Data provided by Steven L. Dawson, PHI. For more information see www.paraprofessional.org and
www.directcareclearinghouse.org.
19
Philip Mattera and Greg LeRoy, The Jobs are Back in Town: Urban Smart Growth and Construction
Employment, Good Jobs First, November 2003.
20
The AOP is a partnership of the Trades Mentor Network of the King County AFL-CIO’s Worker
Center and Apprenticeship & Nontraditional Employment for Women (ANEW) funded by Office
of Port Jobs.
21
Mafruza Khan and Greg LeRoy, Missing the Bus: How States Fail to Connect Economic Development
with Public Transit, Good Jobs First, September 2003.
22
MARTA stands for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, the city of Atlanta’s public
transportation system.
23
A zoning ordinance may be exclusionary in its effect either because it excludes a use from a
municipality or makes only a token allocation of land available for the use
(www.lgc.state.pa.us/deskbook03/Issues24.pdf ). Exclusionary zoning is a technique that effectively
drives up the cost of housing, excluding lower-income households from the community.
24
Missing the Bus, op cit.
25
Mark Cassell, Zoned Out: Distribution and Benefits in Ohio's Enterprise Zone Program, Policy Matters
Ohio, October 2003.

14 Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities

 Endnotes (cont’d)
26
For a discussion of relevant literature, see Greg LeRoy, Sara Hinkley, and Katie Tallman, Another
Way Sprawl Happens: Economic Development Subsidies in a Twin Cities Suburb, pp. 10-12, Good Jobs
First, January 2000. Chris Lester and Steve Nicely, “Giveaways set the stage for a loss,” Kansas City
Star, December 20, 1995.
27
The purpose of state enterprise zone programs is to encourage job creation and capital investment
in areas of economic distress. Such programs provide communities with an economic development
tool to offer state and local incentives and program priority to new or expanding businesses in these
designated areas. Tax increment financing is used to publicly finance needed public improvements
and enhanced infrastructure in a defined area. The idea is that newly developed and redeveloped
property will increase tax revenues and thereby pay for the needed public improvements.
28
Alyssa Talanker et al, Straying from Good Intentions: How States are Weakening Enterprise Zone and
Tax Increment Financing Programs, Good Jobs First, July 2003.
29
Another Way Sprawl Happens, op cit. A summary of the literature on subsidized relocations can be
found in Greg LeRoy’s The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job
Creation, pp. 133-136 (2005, Berrett-Koehler).
30
A living wage ordinance requires employers to pay wages that are above federal or state minimum
wage levels. Only a specific set of workers are covered by living wage ordinances, usually those
employed by businesses that have a contract with city or county government or those who receive
economic development subsidies from the locality (www.epi.org).
31
For more on this and other such agreements, see Community Benefits Agreements: Making
Development Projects Accountable, co-published by Good Jobs First, the Los Angeles Alliance for a
New Economy, and three other California groups, at www.goodjobsfirst.org/cbarelease.htm.
32
This paper deliberately omits housing solutions to job access while in no way diminishing their
significance or effectiveness. Housing and sprawl are the subject of other Funders’ Network
translation papers that cover the issue in detail.
33
Edward V. Regan, Government, Inc.: Creating Accountability for Economic Development Programs,
Government Finance Officers Association, April 1988, pp. 27-28.
34
Transit-oriented development (TOD) refers to residential and commercial areas designed to
maximize access by transit and non-motorized transportation and with other features to encourage
transit ridership. A TOD neighborhood has a center with a rail or bus station, surrounded by
relatively high-density development, with progressively lower-density development
spreading outwards.
35
Press Release, Governor Partners with Local Communities to Develop “Cool Cities,” Spur Economic
Growth, September 19, 2003, see http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168--75516--,00.html.
36
Rick Haglund, Deterioration of cities cited for Michigan’s loss of young skilled workers, Booth
Newspapers, September 13, 2002.
37
Labor Leaders as Smart Growth Advocates: How Union Leaders See Suburban Sprawl and Work for
Smart Growth Solutions, Good Jobs First, August 2003.
38
For more information on emerging labor-philanthropy ties, see Organizing Better Links to Labor, in
The Chronicle of Philanthropy, March 25, 1999 lead article.

Workforce Development and Smart Growth 15

 Translation Papers
The Funders’ Network’s series of translation papers are designed to assist funders and other
interested parties to better understand the connection between sprawling patterns of
development and urban disinvestment and specific issue areas and to articulate opportunities for
progress that would be created by smarter growth policies and practices. Two updated second
editions of the first papers in the series, including this one, have been published to date. Sixteen
topics were covered by first editions in the series. Visit www.fundersnetwork.org to download
electronic copies or request printed versions.

2nd Editions
#2 Workforce Development and Smart Growth: Opportunities for Linking Movements.
September 2005.
#1 Regional Equity and Smart Growth: Opportunities for Advancing Social and Economic
Justice in America. December 2004.

1st Editions
#16 Air Quality and Smart Growth: Planning for Cleaner Air. January 2005.
#15 Energy and Smart Growth: It’s About How and Where We Build. June 2004.
#14 Water and Smart Growth: The Impacts of Sprawl on Aquatic Ecosystems. February 2004.
#13 Community Development and Smart Growth: Stopping Sprawl at its Source. Jointly
commissioned by the Funders’ Network and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation
(LISC). August 2003.
#12 The Arts and Smart Growth: The Role of Arts in Placemaking. Jointly commissioned
by the Funders’ Network and Grantmakers in the Arts. April 2003.
#11 Health and Smart Growth: Building Health, Promoting Active Communities.
February 2003.
#10 Biodiversity and Smart Growth: Sprawl Threatens Our Natural Heritage. October 2002.
#9 Children, Youth and Families and Smart Growth: Building Family Friendly Communities.
August 2002.
#8 Education and Smart Growth: Reversing School Sprawl for Better Schools and
Communities. March 2002.
#7 Aging and Smart Growth: Building Aging-Sensitive Communities. December 2001.
#6 Transportation Reform and Smart Growth: A Nation at the Tipping Point. August 2001.
#5 Agricultural Sustainability and Smart Growth: Saving Urban Influenced Farmland.
April 2001.
#4 Civic Participation and Smart Growth: Transforming Sprawl into a Broader Sense of
Citizenship. April 2001.
#3 Opportunities for Smarter Growth: Parks, Greenspace and Land Conservation. June 2000.
#2 Opportunities for Linking Movements: Workforce Development and Smart Growth.
June 2000.
#1 Opportunities for Smarter Growth: Social Equity and the Smart Growth Movement. 1500 San Remo Avenue, Suite 249
December 1999. Coral Gables, FL 33146
(305) 667-6350 phone
(305) 667-6355 fax
info@fundersnetwork.org
www.fundersnetwork.org