Chicago, it’s time to bring jobs to every neighborhood

It has been widely argued that economic growth downtown will trickle down to the neighborhoods. Now, more recently, we’re being told that the best way to boost struggling neighborhoods is for residents to get jobs downtown because that’s where the jobs have grown.

Those beliefs are dangerously misguided.

Downtown should be a jobs center, particularly for specialized jobs such as those in law, consulting and advertising. These are firms that deliver services to large corporations.

However, neighborhood jobs also are critically important.

Neighborhood jobs provide basic products and services, such as food and convenience goods, that are needed daily. Local restaurants and stores play a key role in bringing people together. And they provide the first rung on the ladder of economic opportunity.

This is a kind of economic development — a source of jobs — that is strong on the North Side and in neighborhoods such as Pilsen and Chinatown. This is neighborhood opportunity — and it is not small.

Appropriately resourced projects that we’re working on in Bronzeville would create more than 500 jobs. Scaling up these efforts across black Chicago could create up to 100,000 jobs over a 10- to 20year period.

Rather than provide incentives to lure big companies downtown — where many want to be anyway — we should work to bring jobs back to neighborhoods and reverse a counterproductive trend. Bernard Loyd, Build Bronzeville project leader