nycfuture.org, November 2016
Tom Hilliard and Neil Kleiman
"A new report by NYU Wagner and the Center for an Urban Future with support from the Citi Foundation highlights how mayors and city managers are using innovative approaches to ameliorate poverty, finance infrastructure work, or protect the environment. The report profiles 15 of the most innovative urban policies launched by cities over the past decade, spotlighting programs from Chicago and Seattle and from Nairobi and São Paulo.
Pattern-breaking policies detailed in the report, Innovation and the City, include San Francisco’s Five Keys Charter School, the nation’s only charter school embedded in a city’s correctional system; Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative, which established a more inclusive process for urban policymaking; Barcelona’s Reempresa program, an economic development effort focused on small business succession; Los Angeles’ new model for integrating workforce and educational services for youth; São Paulo’s plan to capture value from new real estate development to help cover the cost of infrastructure improvements; and an initiative from Malang, Indonesia, that uses revenue generated from garbage collection and recycling to fund comprehensive health care for low-income residents."