T-t-t-t-tech Valley!

The recent announcement about Sematech's relocation to Albany clearly has the potential to be good news in terms of the region's overall economy. Presuming it follows through with the move and projected job additions at least.

How good the news is, however, depends a lot on how well we plan for the impacts—in the city, and regionally. This is good time to remember that Austin managed to grow dramatically while not improving the economic situation of its most vulnerable citizens very much. Many of the companies who came to town found themselves floundering for workers while the unemployment rate in many poor areas didn't decline. So the first thing we need to do is commit to training, job supports, investment in k-12 science education and mentoring, transit improvements, local hiring agreements and anything else that will help our current residents benefit from as many of the new jobs as possible. Bringing people and organizations with this kind of expertise into the Tech Valley development process as soon as possible is crucial.

Some have said that 120,000 people followed Sematech to the Austin region. If we could home grow a portion of the talent they will need here and cut our poverty rate down in the process, we'd have all of the benefits without so much of the sprawl and traffic congestion. This is a vision worth working hard for.

Speaking of sprawl, our center cities can certainly absorb some new residents. But will they go there? And if they do, will the people who were already there be able to afford to stay? These are good questions to get to ask after years of losing population, no doubt. But the time to ask them is now, because they are so much harder to address after the fact.

Luckily, Albany's about to start a planning process. Along with economic incluson, the following items should be on the agenda anyway, but this news increases their priority:    

• Affordable housing development and long-term affordability controls, like land trusts. (Burlington, Vermont has a great land trust example).
• Stabilizing and supporting existing small businesses that serve a range of incomes and needs.
• Regional incentives to combat sprawl and benefit all of our municipalities (outlying municipalities don't actually benefit if they lose all their open space and become a traffic nightmare).
• Fix-it First. Our aging infrastructure needs attention, and we shouldn't be tempted to build new stuff before we attend to that.

This is just a preliminary list. More to come, of course, as we learn more.

Comments

[hawkny]

Burlington? You jest! Once one leaves the Church Street/UVM corridor the "lake city" gets pretty depressing.

Not only are there some pretty down trodden neighborhoods but, IMHO, residential property is grossly over priced...Burlington talks the talk but, in many ways, is unable/unwilling to walk the walk...