Allan Appel Photo
Amy Liu, who like the foundation’s Will Ginsberg served in the first Clinton administration, at HUD.
It was a mistake for New Haven to pursue, along with Bridgeport, old ideas of economic development, like the elusive goal of attracting Amazon’s second headquarters with large tax incentives.
But the two cities should continue working together and through other regional partnerships — along with new approaches — so that economic growth and social equity can grow hand in hand in Greater New Haven.
That message, bolstered by a bevy of supporting statistical evidence, was at the heart of a recipe or framework to create “inclusive growth” offered by Amy Liu, vice president at the Brookings Foundation and co-founder of its urban think tank, the Metropolitan Policy Program.
The ballroom, near to overflowing.
Thursday night she brought her detailed and sobering message to an audience of nearly 300 who filled the Omni Hotel ballroom on the occasion of the 90th annual “meeting and convening” of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
Her cautionary theme: The only way long term to keep our fair city from stagnation — also the case for many of the old industrial cities of the Northeast — is to create “inclusive growth.” That means growth that addresses income disparities and an educational system that is not preparing young people for the increasingly digital economic future.
The foundation’s Ginsberg (at right) at annual meeting with Ronald McDonald House’s Dick Popilowski.
And the only deeply, profoundly, and genuinely effective way to do that for the long haul is to bring together the nonprofit professionals in her audience and the job-creator people to the same table and have a come-to-Jesus moment.
“A massive cultural shift” is required, she said, on the part of CEOs to change their mindset and to value inclusion and racial diversity as the sine qua nons of success in the economy of the future. “They need to embody the change themselves,” Liu said, by opening up spaces on their own boards and counsels.
New Haven Farms’s Jacqueline Maisonpierre and Atticus’s Charles Negaro at the annual meeting.
“Your table must reflect the inclusive future we want to create,” she said — speaking to CEOs of businesses and to nonprofits.
Only when this kind of deepening leadership emerges, she said, will specific strategies evolve like building on the local core “ecosystem,” and “not pursuing traditional growth policies such as mega-business attractions.”
Liu: “Massive cultural shift” needed.
Her research shows that Greater New Haven ranks among the U.S.‘s 100 largest metro areas is 80th in growth, 64th in prosperity, and 54th in the third and crucial criterion, inclusiveness. Liu said New Haven has reason to be optimistic; there is momentum, but it is fragile.
Foundation President and CEO Will Ginsberg concurred and put it this way: “The growth actors [in the Greater New Haven area] and the inclusion actors are not necessarily around the same table. We need to bring these conversations together into one leadership strategy to achieve our goals.”
Bruce Oren