Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. Planning Manager Tim Kelly emails a weekly GR Forward update to the project Steering Committee. Here's this week's communication:

Good Morning Everyone:

I hope your Friday is off to a great start.

This week we continued outreach efforts by meeting with our friends in Creston. There was good discussion around the draft vision statement and goals (attached), and we gathered some very helpful feedback to further refine those. If any of you have comments you would like to share, but you are not able to attend a meeting feel free to email me directly.

In addition to our meeting with Creston, we also met with the following groups:

• What’s Next

• The Rapid Board

See the schedule below for our neighborhood meetings coming up next week. A reminder that we welcome all residents at the neighborhood meetings, you do not necessarily have to live in that neighborhood to attend. Also, please make sure you are helping us promote these meetings in your networks.

• Monday, January 26: West Grand Neighbors at Harrison Park Elementary

• Tuesday, January 27: Roosevelt Park at Cesar E. Chavez Elementary

• Wednesday, January 28: SWAN / JBN at Sibley Elementary

A quick note on our engagement efforts. While we have attempted to be as comprehensive as possible in scheduling meetings, we recognize there may be groups interested in the work we are doing that we are not aware of. I want to remind everyone that someone on our team is almost always available to attend a meeting, provide a presentation, or discuss other ways to provide engagement opportunities. Planning is a fluid process, and we are happy to add activities as we progress. We do, however, need our partners to provide recommendations on what we might be missing. That said, I hope that if any of you suggestions on additional engagement you will notify me or someone else on our team.

Web Numbers

The latest web and social media numbers are below. The Public Forum and news coverage appears to have helped continue our positive momentum.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/grfwd

Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd

Instagram - http://instagram.com/grfwd#

Resources

This article from Richard Florida on inequality and the growth of cities is interesting: www.citylab.com/work/2015/01/inequality-and-the-growth-of-cities/384571

As the article describes, a lot of research is being done to determine the connection between economic inequality and economic growth. What the studies are trying to answer is whether inequality is caused by growth, or whether it is the result of some other forces.

Increasingly, what is being shown is there is not a strong relationship between growth and inequality. Depending on how the two variables are measured, in some cases there is even a negative relationship (i.e. growth reduces the amount of inequality).

To that point, a study conducted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided the following takeaways:

• 1)Societies and cities that redistribute their wealth more have less inequality

• 2)Lower levels of inequality are associated with fast, durable growth; and

• 3)Redistribution effects are benign. That is, they do not diminish growth, but promote it.

Florida summarizes stating “Cities and nations face a choice. They can permit the gap between rich and poor to grow wider. Or they can combat inequality through redistribution and other mechanisms without giving up growth.”

While the article and most of the research is light on describing what redistribution or “other mechanisms” might look like, there seems to be a growing evidence that economic growth can be good for everyone. It is up to those in private and public leadership to identity and enact policies to ensure those impacts are felt throughout communities, and not just by a few.

As always, if you have any questions please let me know.

Have a great weekend,