Amy Liu joined Yavocka Young, Carol Coletta and Paul Tough on The Kojo Nnamdi Show with guest host Rebecca Roberts to discuss strategies for reinvesting in our nation’s urban areas.
Rebecca Roberts: Do you agree that talent production is one of the most urgent needs of cities?
Amy Liu: What we have learned is that there are four critical assets in our cities that we believe our nation needs to leverage, particularly given this conversation about the state of our economy. If this nation wants to embrace an economic agenda for the nation it has to understand, first and foremost, that cities and metropolitan areas are the engines of the economy. Jobs aren’t just created willy-nilly they are highly concentrated in economic centers around the country and those are cities and metro areas. Now how do we empower those cities and metro areas to be the job centers and opportunity centers of our country? Talent and human capital is one of those four key assets and I think the others include innovation, infrastructure and high quality places and high quality neighborhoods. Those are things and factors that drive the decisions of our firms and companies and families and workers. And so we need to have a federal policy a federal partnership with our cities and metro areas around these critical assets, again talent included as one of them, so that we can together help this nation move out of the economic crisis that we are in.
Commentary
President Obama’s Agenda for Cities
January 22, 2009