Center for an Urban Future

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CUNY Chancellor on What's Next for the Public University System and New York's Recovery CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez (photo: Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez) For the City University of New York’s hundreds of thousands of students and millions of alumni, the largest urban university system in the United States has long served as a springboard. A 2017 study by Harvard economist Raj...

Our latest report finds that Brooklyn has emerged as one of the nation’s leaders in the innovation economy, with the borough’s growth in tech start-ups, creative companies, and innovative manufacturing outpacing Manhattan and other leading cities.

Produced in partnership w/ Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Navy Yard, & Industry, the study finds that the innovation economy has become a vital new engine of growth for Brooklyn:
☑️ Adding thousands of well-paying jobs
☑️ Diversifying the borough’s economy
☑️ Giving Brooklyn an important competitive advantage in a part of the economy that is poised to grow in the years ahead

Read it here: https://nycfuture.org/research/brooklyns-growing-innovation-economy

Brooklyn’s Growing Innovation Economy | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) How Tech Start-ups, Creative Companies, and Entrepreneurial Makers are Powering Brooklyn's Economic Future

At today's rally, NYC Council Members and representatives from the workforce development community urged Mayor de Blasio to invest $70 million in .

“All of us are New Yorkers but not all of us live in the same New York when it comes to economic opportunity” -- Hon. Ritchie Torres

CUF's "Opportunity Knocks" report and subsequent Gotham Gazette op-ed showed how Bridge programs, which provide job-specific training at the same time as basic literacy and numeracy skills, can be a crucial on-ramp to middle skill jobs: http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/7551-bridge-programs-get-big-results-but-little-support

“I don't think that the floor was going to fall out from under New York after Amazon. The city has such a strong foundation built over the past decade or more, but it was a loss" — Center for an Urban Future Director Jonathan Bowles in City and State NY

Post-Amazon, New York’s tech sector is still growing When Amazon pulled out of plans to establish a new corporate headquarters in Queens, delivering a blow to the tech industry insiders and elected officials who had toiled to attract the internet giant, some worried that it would send a harmful message to other tech companies thinking about locating i...

It's a beautiful day in New York City, perfect for visiting one of the 1,700 parks. Yet even in this sunshine, the signs of age may be impossible to avoid. As our latest report, "A New Leaf," reveals, the average park is 73 years old, and it has not seen a major renovation since 1997. For small parks, it has been 34 years, and 46 spaces have not been updated in more than a century. In total, the parks system faces $5.8 billion in capital needs.

The de Blasio administration has made historic investments in the parks, spending hundred of millions of dollars on equitable investments, especially in places that don't often get it, like Flushing and Astoria. Yet this is a one-time investment, and less than 18% of state-of-good-repair needs have been funded by City Council or mayor in the past decade.

This is not yet a full-blown crisis, but the cracks are everywhere—and not just on pitted ballfields and crooked paths, but especially the places few of us notice. Retaining walls holding up the landscape are crumbling. Cracked drainage creates rampant flooding. One in five bridges is seriously deteriorated.

Our report details almost two dozen ways to start filling these holes, literal and figurative. The mayor and City Council could establish a dedicated pool of capital funds for addressing unglamorous infrastructure needs, much of which gets overlooked in discretionary funds provided by the council. Dedicated revenue streams for basic parks maintenance are also key, such as including surcharges on tickets to sporting events, expanded greens fees, and enhanced docking fees at marinas.

As we have noted in past reports, reforms to the capital construction process are necessary for all public works, and will save time, money, and give elected officials the confidence to invest in parks. And hiring additional staff to maintain the parks will not only keep them in better shape, saving money in the long run, but could also create hundred or thousands of good, accessible jobs.

https://nycfuture.org/research/a-new-leaf

A New Leaf: Revitalizing New York City’s Aging Parks Infrastructure | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) New York City's public parks face serious problems with aging infrastructure.

In light of today's terrible weather, we've posted a sidebar featured in our recent report on healthcare workers' horrible commutes. During severe weather, when these workers are needed the most, just getting to patients can be all but impossible.

There are some solutions to this unique transit problem:
*NYC could set emergency corridors around major healthcare facilities with shuttle service; Bedpan Alley and the Grand Concourse are two possible pilots
*Healthcare employers can focus on long-term planning work-from-home options
*Public officials should carefully consider shutdowns, which can make it especially hard for home health aids to reach their clients

https://t.co/zaGnfE2eNQ

Weather Emergencies and Emergency Rooms – Center for an Urban Future – Medium During storms, NYC’s healthcare workers often have a harder time getting to patients than helping them.

New York City’s half-million healthcare workers face the worst commutes of any industry, as revealed in our latest report.

The study finds that while most New Yorkers are experiencing transit woes, healthcare employees who rely on public transit have the longest median commutes of any workers in the private sector. In recent decades, healthcare commutes have increased at more than double the rate of all workers in the city. The study attributes the lengthy commutes to serious transit gaps in the boroughs outside Manhattan, where healthcare jobs are growing rapidly but transit options are often strikingly limited.

The city's crumbling subways are only one piece of the problem. Our report finds that yawning transit gaps outside Manhattan and antiquated, broken bus service are fueling New York City's second transit crisis. The report concludes with more than a dozen practical solutions to address these gaps and help make the city's transit system work better for all.

An Unhealthy Commute: The Transit Challenges Facing New York City’s Healthcare Sector | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) New York City's transit system has failed to keep pace with job growth outside Manhattan. These gaps have serious consequences for healthcare and beyond.

Our senior fellow Tom Hilliard was on Brian Lehrer this morning discussing his new report on New York City's college success problem.

They discussed how only 1-in-5 CUNY community college students earns a degree, and half at the senior colleges. They also covered some promising solutions to address these disparities, like expanding CUNY's START program and providing free MetroCards, just like high school students get.

You can find the whole interview here, and we do hope you'll tune in. http://www.wnyc.org/story/getting-degree

Getting to the Degree NYC public high school graduation rates are on the rise but how can we help students complete their degree programs in college?

New York City has a college success problem.

Today, far too few New Yorkers who graduate high school are succeeding in college, with serious consequences for their economic mobility. To lift more of its residents into the middle class, the city will need to make dramatic improvements to its college completion rates.

Our latest report offers ideas to do just that: https://nycfuture.org/research/degrees-of-difficulty

Degrees of Difficulty: Boosting College Success in New York City | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) New York City has a college success problem. Graduation rates are alarmingly low in community colleges and senior colleges, restricting economic opportunity.

Center for an Urban Future updated their information in their About section.

Our newest study reveals that New York City's air cargo sector employs 34,000 people, but is losing market share to other cities across the country. Until 1990, JFK International Airport handled more cargo than any other airport in the world. Now, JFK has fallen to seventh in the United States.

https://nycfuture.org/research/freight-forward

Our new report details the shifting landscape of where live in NYC. Longtime artist havens like Chelsea and Greenwich Village experienced declines in the number of artists over the past 15 years, while neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Throgs Neck have seen a boom in their artist population.

Artists in Schools: A Creative Solution to New York’s Affordable Space Crunch | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) New York City has more artists than ever, but finding artist work spaces is harder than ever, too

We had such a thoughtful discussion at Monday's "Driving Innovation" Forum co-hosted with the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and supported by Citi Foundation. You may have seen the video already, but we also wanted to share some of our big takeaways. Two topics were of particular interest in these uncertain times, and both centered around public-private partnerships.

First off, civic leaders must rely on their institutional and business connections to help drive innovation, which cities can then scale and share with others. Second, innovative work requires reliable data and facts, and private partners may have as much or even more success than politicians of convincing Washington the value of this information.

You can explore these issues more in a new recap on our site: http://bit.ly/2kOf2bi. And we have also posted some photos from the event here, which we hope you enjoy.

Driving Innovation: Cities as Models for Urban Policy Change | Center for an Urban Future (CUF)

We had a great forum this morning at the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service exploring all the ways cities are hubs of urban innovation. You can see highlights at the link below, including a recording of the event and a copy of the report, supported by the Citi Foundation, that inspired this gathering. https://storify.com/MC_NYC/getting-started

Innovation and the City Forum @NYCFuture & @NYUWagner (with images, tweets) · MC_NYC On February 13, the Center for an Urban Future and NYU's Wagner School of Public Service hosted a forum exploring cities' crucial leadership on countless civic issues. Whether it's the economy, housing, healthcare, education, or infrastructure, cities are at the forefront. Here are some highlights.

So much of the national debate has focused on keeping immigrants out. While the Trump administration’s travel ban may be on hold, many are missing a graver issue: We are, and always have been, a nation of immigrants, many of whom now find themselves in more peril than ever. Beyond the bans and border walls, there are new deportation orders and even physical violence to worry about. Millions of immigrant Americans are already here, struggling to improve their lot and that of their adopted country.

As we have demonstrated over the past few days in this series of posts (http://bit.ly/2kjbnlz), foreign-born New Yorkers are not only an integral part of our culture, they are also a vital engine of the economy. Unfortunately, even in a welcoming place like New York City, immigrants must confront countless obstacles to success. We must embrace sensible policies that can help them flourish, and, in so doing, help us as well.

The Center has explored many of these challenges in the past (http://bit.ly/2ls2meb). One of the most obvious is the language barrier. Roughly 1.7 million New York City residents have limited English-language proficiency, and about 697,000 of this group have jobs. That is 41 percent of the city’s limited English speakers and, more crucially, 23 percent of the city’s workforce. This naturally pushes immigrants into lower-skill and lower-wage jobs.

Another major factor is educational attainment, which a lack of English fluency can compound. Some 21 percent of foreign-born workers have less than a high school degree, while another 25 percent have only a high school diploma. Still, many have graduated from college and achieved higher degrees, comprising 32 percent of the immigrant workers in the five boroughs. Higher education does not always ensure a good job, though. In that most familiar of stories (the doctor turned taxi driver or physicist running a bodega), more than a quarter of highly educated immigrants are either unemployed or working in low-skill jobs.

These issues contribute to one of the greatest difficulties facing immigrants: depressed wages. The median household income for a foreign-born New Yorkers is $43,700, compared to $54,700, according to a 2013 analysis by the Department of City Planning. And 28 percent of immigrants make less than $25,000 a year, which is more than double the rate for native-born New Yorkers. In New York City, many of the working poor are immigrants.

It does not have to be so.The Center has studied dozens of ways to empower immigrant workers. You can find them in more detail in our “A City of Immigrant Workers” report, co-written with the Center for Popular Democracy (http://bit.ly/2ls2meb).

We can make educational and training programs more plentiful and accessible, including expanded language offerings and establishing programs in immigrant communities. We can invest in our libraries, which have increasingly become community anchors for both foreign- and native-born New Yorkers. We can create job-placement services for highly educated yet underemployed immigrants, cutting down on “brain waste.” We can expand services and protections for undocumented workers, who are a large and important part of the labor force.

Immigrants have given so much to the city and the country (including the current president). They have enriched our culture and our economy, and there is so much more they could do. Rather than attacking them, we should be backing them. For their sake, as well as our own.

Our latest op-ed profiles California's new $150 million guided pathways college initiative. With the average 6-year graduation rate at New York community colleges just 35%, New York could learn a lot from California's proposal.

Op-Ed: California shows New York how to boost college completion along with affordability | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) The governors of New York and California both issued bold proposals this month placing public colleges and universities at the top of the agenda

Just as thousands of refugees and immigrants made their way into the United States over the weekend—their limbo put in limbo by a Friday court order temporarily blocking the Trump administration’s immigration ban—97 tech companies were busy filing a legal brief opposing the executive order. Like the attorneys general in Washington State and Minnesota who filed the suit challenging the ban, executives at Apple, Microsoft, Airbnb, and Uber were among those arguing that barring immigrants from our shores is bad for business and the economy.

"Immigrants make many of the Nation’s greatest discoveries, and create some of the country’s most innovative and iconic companies," reads the brief, filed with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco (http://bit.ly/2kj3XRV). The same is true here in New York, as we highlighted in a pair of Facebook posts last week, which we invite you to read if you haven’t already (http://bit.ly/2jUkwzU http://bit.ly/2lbsB8r).

Immigrants make up nearly half the city’s workforce, despite the fact that only one in three New Yorkers is foreign-born, and they fill some of our most important jobs, including surgeons, software and structural engineers, taxi drivers, and dishwashers. Yet their greatest contributions may not be the volume and variety of positions they fill but the cash registers and tax coffers. Indeed, foreign-born New Yorkers account for one-third of the city’s economic output.

In 2013 alone, immigrants in New York accounted for $257 billion in economic activity, according to a 2015 analysis by the New York State Comptroller’s Office (PDF: http://bit.ly/2lgqoFz). This activity has nearly doubled since 2000, growing faster than the city’s overall economy; whereas immigrants generated 29 percent of the city’s economic output in 2000, this share reached 32 percent in 2013, according to the comptroller’s analysis.

And these contributions come from all corners of the immigrant community, even those thought to live in the shadows. An analysis (PDF: http://bit.ly/2lfQUOF) by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy conducted last February found that undocumented immigrants in New York State contributed $1.11 billion in local and state taxes. And they pay more than other New Yorkers, with an effective rate of 8.9 percent, compared to 8.1 percent for the typical state resident. Furthermore, the institute estimated that were these New Yorkers granted full legal status, their contributions would rise to $1.36 billion, with an effective tax rate of 9.9 percent.

The crosscurrents of immigration and economics are complicated. What is clear is the incredible contributions immigrants make—not just to infrastructure budgets and hospital wards but also to art galleries, community centers, and dinner tables. The bottom line is important, but so too are the downtrodden. Immigrants of all kinds enrich our understanding of the planet and each other, providing perspectives that are essential in a globalized world.

And as tax receipts and restaurant openings show, there is always room to grow. In our final installment in this series tomorrow, we will explore the challenges facing New York’s immigrant communities, and how policies that help immigrants can strengthen the city as a whole.

When was the last time you went to the pharmacy? Do you remember your pharmacist? Odds are, he or she hailed from another country. After all, three out of five pharmacists in New York are immigrants.

And if that pharmacy was in a skyscraper, it was probably built by immigrants, too. There are the construction workers, of course, 70 to 85 percent of whom are foreign born in certain trades like painting and masonry. But don’t forget the civil engineers who make sure the building won’t fall over. Some 60 percent hail from another country, as well as 48 percent of building inspectors, who make sure the engineers are doing their jobs.

In October, the Center did an exhaustive study of every industry and its immigrant workers (you can read it here: http://bit.ly/2e5tcFw). Immigrants still dominate a handful of industries, with roughly half of the city’s 1.9 million foreign-born workers employed in just 27 fields—many of which are lower down the economic ladder—while being largely shut out of others. At the same time, immigrants play vital roles in many higher-wage fields, like medicine, technology, and finance, where a third to a half of employees were born outside the United States.

So should your house catch fire, odds are an immigrant is not the one coming to the rescue, nor if you find yourself in a public-relations crisis. But frequent a small business in the city, and you will likely find an immigrant New Yorker running the show: there are roughly 243,000 self-employed immigrants, compared to 220,000 self-employed residents who were born in the U.S., a difference of 9 percent.

And keep in mind, as the Center has detailed before (http://bit.ly/2kabh1T), that immigrant entrepreneurs outnumber native-born ones despite the fact almost twice as many New Yorkers were born in the United States. If you want to know more about the enormous impact of immigrant New Yorkers, check out a post we published here yesterday looking at the overall composition of the city’s immigrant workforce.

Next week, we will use this space to explore the outsized contributions immigrants make through their vast economic activity and output — including nearly $1.1 billion generated by undocumented immigrants in New York. And, for all their successes, immigrants must confront myriad challenges that we will also investigate here, challenges that go well beyond bans and border walls.

Over the weekend, thousands of New Yorkers descended on JFK airport to protest the detention of two Iraqi refugees and dozens of other travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. As they marched and organized, millions of immigrant New Yorkers went about their lives as best they could. Nearly as shocking as the ban itself is that it was enacted by someone who grew up in Queens, arguably the most diverse place on the planet, someone who made his name building towers and selling ties around the world.

President Trump's actions are deeply troubling, even backwards. But the administration's nascent Muslim ban is not only an assault on our identity. It also attacks something the president claims to know better than anyone: the economy.

Although immigrants comprise about a third of all New Yorkers, they make up nearly half of the workforce. They are responsible for computer programming in Chelsea, babysitting on Park Avenue, filling prescriptions in Coney Island, and babka-baking in Ridgewood, Queens. The same promise of safety and prosperity that brought Friedrich Trumpf to the Lower East in 1885 has drawn today’s 3.2 million immigrants to all corners of the five boroughs. As we shall demonstrate with further data in the coming days, most immigrants and refugees are here to embrace that most important of American values—hard work.

That the ratio of immigrants in New York’s workforce is greater than the ratio of residents might seem to prove the president’s point, and that of his supporters, that foreigners are taking jobs and driving down wages. But the reality is that New York is experiencing record employment. Many of the jobs being filled by immigrants are either in high-skill fields where we cannot find enough capable candidates, or low-skill ones that native-born New Yorkers are loath to do. (We have the data to prove it, too, so watch this space for more in the coming days.)

Furthermore, our city’s incredible growth is built largely on the backs of immigrants: Between 1980 and 2011, New York’s City’s foreign-born population grew by 1.4 million, or 84 percent, while the native-born population declined by 223,000, a 4 percent drop.

Facts matter. There is no alternative to this. The Center for an Urban Future does not know exactly what the future may hold for the city’s vast population, no matter where it hails from. What we do know are the facts, having spent the past two decades assiduously tracking immigrants’ contributions to our singular metropolis (you can find much of that work at nycfuture.org). We hope that by sharing our data with you about immigrants in our city, we might elevate the conversation over the next week and beyond to reflect on exactly what’sat stake.

After all, for all the talk of New York as a city of immigrants, did you know that it’s more true now than ever? Immigration is driving the city’s growth, swelling city revenues while enriching the fabric of civic life. And for all the nostalgic fantasies of Ellis Island and Five Points, the numbers show that immigration has rarely had such an impact as it is in this new millennium That is why running the numbers, and not just our mouths, is so crucial at this time.

(Photo: CC Luminary Traveler/Flickr)

Crain's New York Business on the future of retailers in the digital age

Amazon and high rents are killing New York City retailers Stores are anxious to see what remains of the industry—if anything remains at all—after consumers shift to digital

6 ways the state can expand economic opportunity in 2017 As Gov. Andrew Cuomo crisscrossed New York on his State of the State tour, a key theme was economic opportunity: why it’s vital to take action now and how the state can help more New Yorkers take advantage of today’s economy. The governor’s...

Our new commentary: 7 ways New York State can expand economic opportunity in 2017 from creating a statewide workforce development fund to support worker training to supporting community colleges in rethinking developmental education

7 Ways New York State Can Expand Economic Opportunity in 2017 | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) These seven policy proposals elevate practical ideas that New York’s leaders can use to invest wisely in its residents.

"If a youth turns out unemployable, that means we are not done working with them."

Where Dealing With Trauma Is Part of Job Training An unusual nonprofit for disadvantaged youth combines real-world work experience with counseling to overcome past pain.

"In the world of gigantic infrastructure projects, there’s a fair amount of 'hurry up and wait.'"

The 7 Most Inspiring, Majestic Infrastructure Projects of 2016 Bridges, tunnels, subways, and more.

"The tech sector has seen meteoric growth while finance has been treading water."

The Long View: Why a tech crash could rattle NYC’s RE market Observers have been predicting a tech crash for years now, but you won’t hear many in New York’s real estate industry openly fret about it. Most see it as something that matters to other people: real estate investors in San Francisco or Seattle and maybe WeWork’s landlords. New York’s real estate ma

"New York should make public college tuition-free. At the same time, the state should take steps to help students complete their studies and make the most of this crucial investment" -our new op-ed.

CityViews: NY Should Make Public College Free—and Help Students Graduate From it More than half of first-time students at New York's public colleges will not graduate in six years, a status quo that undermines the promise of equal access to higher education.

"While President Barack Obama had overseen eight years of 'innovation' on urban matters, that could end under his successor, which could leave cities 'even more on their own than they were before.'"

A comprehensive guide for saving the world's cities By 2050, some 70 percent of the world’s population will be urbanized. That means the problems of cities are the problems of humanity.

Predictions for the year ahead in NYC politics

Predictions! Experts Look Ahead to 2017 in New York Politics Gotham Gazette is an online publication covering New York policy and politics as well as news on public safety, transportation, education, finance and more.

$194 million in infrastructure upgrades coming to the South Bronx

No People in Sight Yet, but South Bronx Gets Ready for Development New York City goes ahead with a $194 million plan to fix up infrastructure on the Bronx side of the Harlem River in anticipation of people and businesses coming with future development.

Our 9th annual "State of the Chains" report shows that the number of chain stores in NYC rose for the 8th straight year, even though there are signs that the growth of chains is slowing.

Meanwhile, NYC is now home to 596 Dunkin' Donuts stores - 179 in Queens alone - more stores than any other retailer in NYC.

State of the Chains, 2016 | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) The number of chain store locations across the city increased for the eighth year in a row, driven by growth in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island

"America’s cities function as laboratories of democracy, incubating pioneering programs ranging from open data initiatives to early childhood interventions."

Op-ed from our new report:https://nycfuture.org/pdf/Innovation_and_the_City_2016.pdf

Three Key Ingredients of Successful City Policy Op-Ed: "Elected officials at every level should look to what is working in cities for inspiration."