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The California Supreme Court ruled in March that the University of California, Berkeley must cut its undergraduate enrollment by nearly 3,000 for the 2022–23 school year. The ruling came only three weeks before the university had planned to mail acceptance letters, forcing it to send 5,000 fewer offers. The university had been sued by Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, a local anti-density group, under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods successfully argued that the university had insufficiently assessed the environmental impact of increasing its enrollment. However, the group’s leader publicly stated that he sued because higher enrollment would increase the city’s ...

IEDC is urging members to reach out to their elected representatives about supporting the reauthorization of the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Reauthorizing EDA would bring new funding potential, new programming, and key policy changes that would allow the agency to truly become a 21st-century leader in economic development. The past few years have demonstrated the great need for a more robust federal partner in local economic development nationwide. EDA has committed extraordinary resources and programming to meet this need, but more is needed that can only be achieved through reauthorization. When contacting your senator and congressperson, be prepared to share your ZIP code and indicate if you need a response (not ...

Aaron N. Gruen, principal of the urban-economics, market-research, land-use policy, and pre-development services firm Gruen Gruen + Associates, shares his thoughts on how to combat skyrocketing gas and housing costs.

At IEDC’s 2022 Leadership Summit, Right to Start CEO Victor Hwang spoke about how to encourage entrepreneurship and increase startup growth in cities across the United States. He presented startling facts about U.S. startups, barriers entrepreneurs face, and actions to end the “startup slump”. Hwang pointed out several aspects of startups and entrepreneurship that policymakers often miss. For one, startups and young businesses are not just clustered in the tech sector, but can be found in nearly every business area. These businesses account for a large portion of U.S. net job growth and are major contributors to real GDP and wage growth. Hwang also emphasized that the number of U.S. startups has dropped significantly in ...

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center cohosted a webinar with the University of North Carolina Tax Center titled What Are the Effects of the Biden Administration’s Corporate Tax Proposals? Jared Bernstein, a member of the U.S. Council of Economic Affairs, kicked off the webinar by detailing how the response to the current crisis has been “uniquely strong”. He identified some of the labor market’s constraints and barriers that exist between supply and demand, such as the coronavirus, vaccination rates, affordable childcare, and enhanced unemployment insurance. Shifting the discussion to tax policy, Bernstein believes in a few motivating operations to prioritize. First, we must “relink” pre-tax growth ...

What happened over the weekend? On the evening of Friday, May 7, the Colonial Pipeline Company fell victim to a ransomware attack that forced the shutdown of its system, which stretches 5,500 miles from Houston to Linden, N.J. According to its records, the company is responsible for carrying 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies to a 14-state region, which translates to 100 million gallons of fuel per day. As soon as the attack was identified, all pipeline operations were stopped in order to mitigate damages. This was the first time the company had ever halted all operations at once. Who is responsible? The FBI has determined that the attack was carried out by a hacker organization known as DarkSide. DarkSide claims to be a ...

As part of IEDC’s Take Action Against Racism in Economic Development webinar series, four presenters spoke about the geography of inequality and the relationship between place and economic opportunity. Robby Habans, PhD, economist at The Data Center in New Orleans, and Robert Manduca, PhD, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, gave an overview of place-based economic disparities on a micro and macro level. Habans presented his work on how life expectancy and economic mobility can vary at the neighborhood level within a single metropolitan area. In New Orleans and across the country, data show that life expectancy in majority Black census tracts is consistently lower than in majority non-Black census tracts ...

As climate change has become increasingly evident, the support for a greener economy has grown. The 2009 stimulus package was one of the first government policies that allocated funding for green industries. President Obama included $20 billion for green economy investments, which included $500 million for green job training. This action began shifting our economy to include large energy sectors focused on environmental health. President Biden has made it known that he plans to support and invest in the green economy. Growth in green industries will help Biden achieve his goal of a zero carbon emission energy sector by 2035. In the past month, multiple legislations and proposals have been introduced to help with the shift towards a ...