Partnership for Sustainable Communities welcomes county officials to White House

By Ray LaHood, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson

From the moment President Obama took office, this administration has been committed to strengthening local communities and helping them realize their own visions for economic opportunity, prosperity, and competitiveness.

In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, we worked together to help state, county, and municipal officials improve delivery of critical services to citizens.

And today, as families struggle with soaring gas prices, the President is taking a number of significant steps: ensuring that affordable housing is closer to public transportation, jobs and services; that vehicles are more fuel-efficient; and that people have the option to reach their destination without a car.

With the economy recovering--generating private sector job growth for 15 straight months--county administrators from across the nation were at the White House yesterday to discuss how the Federal government can partner with our nation’s counties to continue making our communities and metro regions more economically competitive.

Of course, this conversation has been going on for nearly two and a half years.  At the same time the Recovery Act was helping those communities harmed most by the economic crisis, President Obama asked the three of us to work together to ensure we get the biggest bang for the buck from federal investments in affordable, green housing, environmental safeguards, and transportation for families across the country--all critical elements of a stronger foundation for our economy. 

The President recognized that, with the average household spending 52 cents out of every dollar on housing and transportation combined, and with the cost of moving products on our roads five times what it was 25 years ago, these kinds of innovations are absolutely critical to winning the future.

Since we started the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, we’ve helped integrate housing with transportation, neighboring retail, and business development; cleaned contaminated properties on main streets and near transit, returning them to productive use; and improved bus service in transit-dependent neighborhoods.

Our groundbreaking partnership hasn't just improved housing, transportation and the environment.  It’s also created jobs and generated new economic activity, helping restore vitality in communities across America.

In 2009, Dubuque, Iowa, was redeveloping its historic Millwork District, an area that had been dormant since the early part of the 20th century.  IBM immediately saw this investment as creating just the kind of environment that today’s talented professionals want.  And they wanted to be a part of it, too.  That’s where our partnership came in.  Using reclaimed contaminated properties, green building techniques for mixed use development, and a rebuilt street network, we helped give an old river town a new beginning, and IBM added 1,300 local jobs.

In Kansas City, local leaders came together to focus resources on a 150-block area devastated by high rates of poverty, unemployment, crime, and high concentrations of vacant and abandoned properties.  In this “Green Impact Zone,” we not only helped fix broken sidewalks, repave roads, and add better-coordinated traffic signals.  We also helped trained area residents and put them to work conducting energy audits and weatherizing the 2,500 homes in the Zone's neighborhoods.  We added a new green bus rapid transit system and a job training and employment program for ex-parolees in green building, park restoration, and transit work.

The work of our partnership in both cities is a model for coordinating federal and local investment to create jobs, promote sustainable development, and revitalize communities.  Because we began breaking down the barriers dividing our agencies, it became much easier for us to partner with local officials.  And it became much easier to focus our resources on the projects that make the biggest difference in peoples’ lives.

Through it all, the driving force behind changing the way we plan our communities hasn’t been Washington, but local leaders like the county administrators who visited the White House yesterday.  They recognize that real fiscal responsibility is finding ways to solve several problems with a single investment.

Their leadership on the ground reminds us that the debate going on in communities across the country isn’t about government that’s big or small.  It’s about government that’s smart and partnerships that work.

It’s about working together to deliver results for the people and places who depend on us most. 

Comments

[Katherine]

I would love to applaud this effort, but I'm skeptical of it. I don't see it ACTUALLY happening, the way it was planned to happen. 15 month straight job creation??? (How does that compare to the continued job loss situation??? You're not really creating jobs, if people are still losing them, all you're doing is shuffling around the people that temporarily have them.)

Are you saying that these sustainable communities, mixed-use developments with apartments/condos and retail shops (clothing, grocery, entertainment, dining), are attracting a struggling, lower income set of families or workers and that by obtaining a retail job as a cashier at Ross they can afford the rent of the neighboring apartments/condos in the same development? I don't buy it. And I don't see it.

Living in Long Beach, CA I have seen the revitalization of our own downtown area where mixed-use communities were erected in previously depressed and blighted urban areas near mass transit stations. The only problem is, I myself have priced out the apartments and condos there and even on a SALARY of $45K couldn't afford the rent, so I have a hard time believing that sustainable cities are really sustainable. I know lots of people who live downtown, but who own a car and drive about 30 miles out of town for work - because dishing popcorn at the movie theatre doesn't quite pay the bills.

Maybe you could give me some examples?

I also still don't think that mass transportation (in urban areas only) or fuel efficient cars (that are waaaaaay out of the average consumer's affordable price range at $23K+) are quite the answer to rising gas prices. In fact it's a total farce. It may be a solution to a small population of mobile urbanites, but not to established suburban families or couples whose jobs aren't easy to get to by public transit, and who cannot afford to move or buy a new car. I think the only true solution to our depression-era economic status is LESS government involvement and more de-regulation. Let us do for ourselves, let the strong survive. The playing field is not supposed to be even. By trying to even it, you actually make it slope more unevenly.

[alquiler en barcelona]

Some of these are pretty cool. If would respect the list more if it weren’t so mac centric however. Nice list either way…