Green Jobs Growing in America’s Inner Cities

[irishbobcat]

Green Jobs Growing in America's Inner Cities


While the number of inner-city jobs in the largest U.S. cities has grown by a scant 1% overall during the past decade, new research from Apollo, the Initiative for a Competitive City (ICIC), and Green For All, suggests that inner-city green jobs have grown by 11%, more than 10 times the rate of job growth overall. These preliminary results do not cover the full range of green jobs, but the findings are significant nonetheless. Perhaps most notably, because this level of growth appears to match the level of green economic job growth beyond the inner city, marking a stark departure from decades of metropolitan job growth patterns. Something is going right, and understanding what that is and creating a model for economic development that capitalizes on this emerging opportunity is the focus of a pilot project underway in the city of Flint. Flint's Mayor Dayne Walling will appoint a task force to examine the city's green economic job growth and to make recommendations for how the city can continue to attract green business and good jobs. The final report and recommendations will be released by Apollo Alliance, ICIC, and Green For All in Summer 2011.