Metropolitics

Reimagining Skill

Nichola Lowe — 2021-10-12T05:00:00Z

Nichola Lowe argues that skill needs to be reimagined, not erased from efforts to strengthen the institutional infrastructure that is needed to deliver better-quality jobs to more workers. Drawing on claims outlined in her recent book, Putting Skill to Work, she presents uncertainty around skill as a generative material for shaping business recovery and growth, allowing worker-supporting institutions to promote changes that result in much better workplaces.
With urban economies rebounding and

- Debates / work, skills, labor markets, employment, jobs, businesses, urban economy

Between Two Crises: New York's Artisanal Food Startup Founders

Nga Than — 2021-09-28T05:00:00Z

The Covid‑19 pandemic forced a pause to a decade of growth for New York City's artisanal food startups. Strategies employed by their founders reveal the precarity of their circumstances and the importance of support from city government.
---- Series: New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic Food startups—small-scale artisanal food preparation enterprises—have proliferated in many global cities since the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In New York City, food manufacturing

- From the Field / food industry, food culture, food, artisans, start-ups, businesses, manufacturing, precarity, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, United States, New York

Fixing the Accessibility Gap in Municipal Procurement

Emily Holloway & Nicholas Shatan — 2019-03-05T06:00:00Z

How can minority- and women-owned businesses overcome structural disadvantages to building wealth through entrepreneurship? Emily Holloway and Nicholas Shatan assess minority- and women-owned business enterprise (M/WBE) procurement policies in New York City and show that while these programs are designed to generate equitable access to business growth, M/WBE participants are not receiving enough contracts—however, if implemented more strategically and equitably, such policies have the potential

- Debates / New York, Brooklyn, Bronx, United States, accessibility, procurement, women, gender, ethnicity, race, businesses, minorities, entrepreneurship

The Endangered Enclave

Mike Owen Benediktsson & Brian Lamberta & Sarah Van Norden — 2015-10-06T05:00:00Z

While most gentrification studies focus on residential displacement, businesses also suffer from rising rents and a shifting clientele. Focusing on Hispanic-owned businesses in gentrifying areas of New York City, Mike Owen Benediktsson, Brian Lamberta, and Sarah Van Norden document gentrification's commercial impact, and offer potential solutions for preserving a neighborhood's commercial landscape.
In recent years, amid soaring property values in New York City, thousands of independently

- Debates / gentrification, New York, ethnic retail, displacement, businesses, Brooklyn

Could harmonised working times spell an end to the rush hour?

Emmanuel Munch & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-02-12T05:50:00Z

Efforts to coordinate working hours across urban territories have increased in recent years. By exploring the “desynchronisation” of journeys, these experiments aim to reduce congestion at peak times at the lowest possible cost. Field trials, while promising on paper, have been confronted with a complex and changing reality, marked by increasingly individualised daily schedules.
The simultaneous nature of home-to-work mobility is the root cause of congestion in many transport networks,

- Essays / public transportation, well-being, mobility, transport, work, territorial development, businesses, time, mass transit