ReDefining Economic Development NYC

Creating A Blueprint for New York City’s
Progressive Development Movement

The idea for Redefining Economic Development evolved out of the progressive economic development work that dozens of organizations and people are doing throughout the City—creating and retaining quality jobs, securing wage and benefits regulation, setting housing and environmental standards, responding to the development agendas set by private developers, businesses and the government as well as initiating and developing our own vision and plan for positive economic development.

The intention of the Redefining Economic Development NYC initiative is to bring the people and organizations that are involved in this work together to find ways to do it better. There are dozens of “economic development” efforts going on in the City, and an opportunity for us to come together—to understand how these efforts can represent more than the sum of their parts, how coordinated messaging and education opportunities might increase our effectiveness, how we might develop principles and eventually a blueprint for accountable economic development in NYC—is now before us.

In the summer of 2005, NY Jobs with Justice, the Pratt Center for Community Development, and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU decided to reach out to groups working on a range of economic development campaigns and issues in New York to determine if other organizations in the City agreed that it was time to take advantage of this strategic opportunity. The overwhelming answer was yes.

Now, together, we have begun a process to redefine how economic development is done in NYC. The initiative was launched in November, 2005 at the "Defining Economic Development" event with 57 community, labor, housing, environmental, faith, education, and policy groups attending. Click here to watch a video on the event.