Cullum Clark: Creating Cities of Opportunity

<p>A growing body of research—including research by Raj Chetty’s Equality of Opportunity Project (now called <a href='https://opportunityinsights.org/'>Opportunity Insights</a>)—is making it plain: where a person lives has a huge influence on their ability to build prosperity, climb the economic ladder, and pursue the American Dream.</p> <p>Yet why do some cities and neighborhoods do better at this than others? What lessons can be learned and then translated into local policies and practices elsewhere, so that more Americans have access to economic opportunity?</p> <p>To help answer these questions, The <a href='https://www.bushcenter.org/explore-our-work/issues/economic-growth.html'>George W. Bush Institute</a> is producing a series of reports called the Blueprint for Opportunity. The first of those reports, <a href='https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/resources-reports/reports/cities-and-opportunity-in-21st-century-america.html'>“Cities and Opportunity in 21st Century America,”</a> was released in November. It looked at 61 metropolitan areas—home to 80 million Americans—that are standouts when it comes to economic mobility. These cities are notable because they have been “unusually successful in fostering relatively high college completion, job-market access, new business creation, and housing affordability. They also tend to score high for social capital—the dense fabric of social connection and civic engagement that makes a community tick.”</p> <p>The report also makes clear that “cities of opportunity” aren’t limited to the superstar coastal metros like Washington, D.C., Boston, or San Francisco. Far from it: exciting (and instructive) things are happening in mid-sized, middle-income, middle-America cities like Des Moines, Lincoln, Boise, among many others. “[Creating] a high-opportunity city doesn’t require the vast wealth of America’s top technology or finance capitals,” the report concludes. “Every city or town has unexplored avenues to promote opportunity, one neighborhood at a time.”</p> <p>