For nearly a century, Winston-Salem, N.C. was a major hub of tobacco manufacturing. It was home to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which employed nearly 30,000 of the city’s residents at the height of its operations in the late 1950s. But as the decades wore on, Winston-Salem’s economy began to falter. Years of medical research about the dangers of smoking had taken its toll on the tobacco industry, and the city’s traditional manufacturing base began to dissipate. By the end of the 1980s, Winston-Salem had lost close to 10,000 jobs across multiple sectors, while R.J. Reynolds downsized the majority of its local workforce by 1989.
“Everything had been going so well,” says Gayle Anderson, former president and CEO of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce. “We really didn’t feel the need to import any businesses or import talent.”
But they don’t call Winston-Salem the City of Arts and Innovation for nothing.
Since the late ’80s, Winston-Salem has revolutionized its stagnant economy with support from local business, educational institutions and emerging artists. In 1992, the Chamber of Commerce teamed up with nearby Wake Forest University to begin renovating the abandoned R.J. Reynolds factories in its downtown district, now a thriving research and business park. Dubbed the Innovation Quarter, it is a 330-acre space that employs 3,700 people and houses 170 companies and five academic institutions.
There’s been a rebirth of the city’s arts community, too. Spearheaded by local developers like John Bryan, the city’s once-vacant downtown transformed into a cornucopia of artisan shops, restaurants, breweries and even a Muay Thai studio.
Despite these positive developments, Winston-Salem isn’t without its troubles. A 2017 study by Winston-Salem State University found the city and surrounding Forsyth County ranked third-to-last out of a total of 2,478 U.S. counties in terms of economic mobility, and many of the residents most directly impacted by a lack of economic opportunity are African-American. This inspired Goler Community Development Corporation, a local urban real-estate nonprofit, to get involved, helping ensure all residents enjoy a share of the city’s recent success.
“When you concentrate poverty on a particular part of town, you’re not going to have great outcomes,” says Michael Suggs, president of Goler CDC. “In order to have a sustainable community, you need these different incomes together.”
Watch the full documentary above to see how Winston-Salem rallied its citizens to shape the future of its economy.
Tag: America Resurgent
America Resurgent: Denver
In the 1980s, Denver’s economy faltered. Its steel industry contracted, resulting in the loss of 30,000 jobs in the city alone, while the overall unemployment rate in Colorado rose to 8.5 percent.
But the city has experienced an economic resurgence over the last two decades. Since 2000, the metro area’s GDP has almost doubled, while the population has grown 17 percent. Aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing took advantage of Denver’s unique location in America and paved the way for over 130 aerospace companies to exist there today, with some support from local universities like the University of Colorado Boulder.
At the same time, recreational marijuana was legalized by Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2014, which brings $14 million in taxes to Denver every year, and, to date, $769 million to the state of Colorado.
Despite these advances and the growing Denver economy, the city’s homeless population grew over 20 percent in 2017 alone, while the average price of a one-bedroom home surpassed $500,000.
Watch the video above to see how Denver’s resurgence changed the trajectory of the Mile High City.
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#AmericaResurgent is a five-part series that elevates the changemakers, approaches and innovations that are driving urban revitalization across the nation. See the rest of the series here, and watch for the next three installments in the weeks to come.
America Resurgent: Albany
Albany, New York is the epicenter of a workforce renaissance.
Following decades of manufacturing job losses, the city capitalized on its infrastructure and advances in technology to create thousands of new jobs and increase its GDP more than 60 percent between 2001 and 2015. More than $49 million worth of state and federal funding helped the Port of Albany-Rensselaer expand its shipping operations for clients like GE Power, while simultaneously creating 1,400 jobs.
At the same time, the construction of the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of Albany added an additional 4,000 jobs and helped the city become a leader in the worldwide semiconductor industry.
But despite these advances, Albany’s poverty rate still remains higher than at the turn of the century, with 36,827 residents living in poverty as of 2015.
Watch the video above to see how Albany’s growth has changed the nature of this capital city.
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