INCLUSIVE & SHARING
INVESTING IN RACIAL EQUITY THROUGH SMALLSCALE MANUFACTURING BY ILANA PREUSS
How to improve your economic development programs to better support diverse business owners in the future.
W
hat does it mean to have a smart city and create an equitable economic recovery? The personality of the place, the personality of our storefronts, the uniqueness of our community, and the people and places we have left behind in our economies all come together in our downtown and are essential not only to our recovery but to ultimately filling those storefronts and creating the smart cities where people can thrive. Because we can’t have smart cities without an inclusive and equitable economy. More Black- and Latino-owned businesses had to close for an extended period of time in 2020 than White-owned businesses. We’ve had an enormous impact on our employment; we’ve lost them low-wage jobs. We also have this legacy of a racial wealth gap. And when we look at the impact on Black households, it’s not just because of the lack of equal-paying
jobs, but it’s also because of our history of excluding Black households, jobs, and homeowners from a lot of the opportunities that people had over the last 50-60 years. We are at a transformational moment and an opportunity today to build a strong, inclusive economy and create thriving downtowns for our smart cities. But we need to invest differently. We need to invest with intention and purpose and address our racial and place inequities to create places that people love and that draw in others. This means that we’re investing in the people and businesses that live there now. We need to create a new structure to support all of that and invest in it. And we need to think longterm, but we need to act now. The need to act right now is so extreme that we need to figure out things we can do in the next six months, maybe nine months, that really have an impact on our small businesses, on our people who
live in our community, and help people build wealth and become a part of the success that’s their community. One way we do this is by engaging with small-scale manufacturing businesses. These are businesses that create tangible products that we can replicate or package. Sio Ceramics is one great example. They create ceramic jewelry and different kinds of household ceramic items. Employees work out of a microretail storefront where they do production and retail in the same space. They are selling at street festivals, out of their storefront, online direct to consumer, and wholesale to other shops all across the country. That means this business has four revenue sources, making them incredibly nimble, and in many cases, disaster-proof and able to be a part of our growing economy. One example of small-scale manufacturing is Woodhaven Custom Calls in Heflin,
Ilana Preuss CEO, Recast City Washington, DC Ilana Preuss is the founder of Recast City, which works with communities to bring smallscale manufacturing into downtowns and neighborhood main streets to create places that are resilient, inclusive, and equitable. And yes, that can be the building blocks of a smart city of the future. She is also the author of Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with SmallScale Manufacturing.
82 | Smart City Miami
© RECAST CITY
