Spartanburg's biggest challenge and the principles guiding City Staff's response

Walking through Downtown Spartanburg these days is a feast for the eyes. New buildings and renovated historic icons, new original upscale dining and nightlife options, and a corresponding level of activity that hasn't been seen in decades are the story of our city's core in 2018, and that level of growth and energy shows no signs of waning. The downtown boom isn't just something local bureaucrats push anymore. It's now a very evident reality celebrated daily by organizations and ordinary residents throughout Spartanburg County. But drive just a short distance from that new energy and excitement, and it becomes clear that the larger story of Spartanburg is much more complicated. The legacies of racial and class disparities, flawed public housing strategies from previous generations, persistent educational attainment gaps, and the localized effects of global economic shifts are all around us in Spartanburg. And while all of us applaud the tremendous economic development progress made in our city in recent years and work daily to ensure that it continues, we also understand that there's little benefit from downtown brick and mortar masterpieces to be felt by families that remain mired in the cycle of intergenerational poverty. At a retreat last month City Council heard details about some of our city's challenges of equity, detailed in a report from Dr. Kathleen Brady, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Studies Institute at USC Upstate. In reacting to the sobering look at our challenges laid out in Dr. Brady's report, City Management crafted a set of guiding principles to help us think about how best to approach Spartanburg's most pressing long-term concern. Poverty is the central existential challenge facing the city. We need high-yield, high bang-for-the-buck strategies that boost human capital and raise the prospects for our citizens. We must work in deep partnership with our key partners—it is not just our view of strategies that matters. We must engage and be responsive to partners that can help us reach our goals. Some interventions are best led by the city, others by partners The built environment is important, but no set of physical amenities or community facilities can change the trajectory for a household without a route to self-sufficiency We must leverage non-local money, and to do so, we need a clear understanding of our strategies. Resources follow coherence. We must avoid investing in projects that don't have a specific human capital impact with quantified outcomes. Today on the podcast, we're talking with Assistant City Manager Chris Story about this list of principles, about why it matters to us as a local government that we take steps to address poverty, and why it ultimately benefits every one of our citizens to live in a more equitable Spartanburg. Listen below for more.