Our policy research is informed by our commitment to policies that promote equity, sustainability, and efficient democratic government. We focus on concrete, implementable recommendations for mayors and city leaders.
By Topic
-
A Boston That Works. Mayors Innovation Project and SEIU 32BJ.Nearly one in four Boston families lives in poverty and incomes in the Greater Boston area are more unequally distributed than in the vast majority of other metro areas around the country. The good news is that the City has a number of important tools that can be engaged to address these problems. However, in order to maximize its effectiveness, the City will have to re-focus and re-organize its approach to economic development. Critically, the City must make combatting poverty and inequality a core priority in all of its programs. Moreover, the City should adopt a broader and more proactive vision of economic development and reorganize programs and structures accordingly. This report, co-written with SEIU 32BJ, identifies five key ways in which the City can re-focus and re-organize its programs and provides a number of specific recommendations of steps the City should take.
Document -
Raise the Floor Milwaukee. COWS.This report highlights how raising the low-wage floor improves quality of life for the 100,000 workers in poverty-wage jobs in the city, and for a roughly equal number of poverty-wage workers in the suburban counties around city. Long term decline was made more brutal by the Great Recession, leaving workers at the mercy of a dramatic shift from manufacturing into services, declining unionization, and falling job quality. Evidence of the economic crisis abounds, yet Milwaukee’s problems — including racial disparity and residential segregation, child poverty, crime and incarceration, catastrophic drop-out rates, especially for African Americans and Hispanics — are not inevitable.
Document -
Urban Freight Transportation: Low Cost Measures to Reduce Negative Impacts. Mayors Innovation Project and the State Smart Transportation Initiative.Freight transportation is a critical element of both our national and local economies. Yet, it creates a number of challenges for cities due to congestion, emissions, crashes, noise and other factors. This report provides cities with low cost policy-driven measures to reduce the negative impacts of freight transportation. Increasing the efficiency of freight movement and addressing the social costs and environmental justice issues of freight transportation are not mutually exclusive. The strategies identified in this report can help cities meet their transportation challenges in the years ahead while promoting just, healthy, and sustainable freight practices.
Document -
Local Food and Economic Development: A Guide for Local Governments. Mayors Innovation Project.Every city has a food economy and most have at least the beginnings of a local food value chain. This means that every city has an opportunity to increase local economic activity, create jobs, and promote healthy, local food by helping local businesses to capture more of this market. Cities should include local food as part of their economic development efforts, and this paper will help them do that. Nationally, the trend is toward local food – cities should take advantage of this.
Document -
Cities at Work: Progressive Local Policies to Rebuild the Middle Class. COWS and the Mayors Innovation Project.This report is based on the practical experience and struggle of elected officials across the country to move their communities onto the “high road” of shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and efficient democratic government. Its goal is to arm progressive local elected leaders and advocates with a range of effective policies that, if adopted, would make a significant difference in getting on that high road. They will be able to use better democratic organization to add value, reduce waste, and capture and share locally the great benefits of doing both. Report summary.
Read more Document