Training Materials
(PAST PROJECT–CONTENT HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED)
Smart Growth Training Materials
The following are downloadable Good Jobs First training materials and key studies that you can use as resources for your own trainings on smart growth for working families.
What is Suburban Sprawl Q & A
A basic handout that defines key terms like sprawl and smart growth.
AFL-CIO Resolution on Urban Sprawl and Smart Growth
The text of the 2001 national AFL-CIO convention resolution denouncing the harms of sprawl and urging unions to weigh in for smart growth.
How Sprawl Harms Union Members
A one page chart cataloging the ways in which different union members are harmed by sprawl.
Opportunities for Linking Movements: Workforce Development and Smart Growth
A Good Jobs First translation paper for the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, originally 2000 and updated 2005. An essay about the mutual self interests of groups promoting workforce development and smart growth.
Talking to Union Leaders about Smart Growth
Good Jobs First, 2001. A hands-on tool to help smart growth activists reach out to union leaders based on working families’ self-interest.
Labor Leaders as Smart Growth Advocates: How Unions See Suburban Sprawl and Work for Smart Growth Solutions
Good Jobs First, 2003. This survey of union federation leaders—39 central labor council leaders and 11 state labor federation leaders—reveals that all of them see serious problems in their regions being caused by suburban sprawl and have advocated for smart growth policies.
The Jobs are Back in Town: Urban Smart Growth and Construction Employment
Addressing the concern of some Building Trades unions that smart growth is “no growth in sheep’s clothing,” this study finds that by every credible measure, smart growth actually creates more hours of construction work—and more likely unionized work—than does sprawl.
Community Benefits Agreements: Making Development Projects Accountable
Good Jobs First and the Partnership for Working Families 2000 and updated 2005. The first manual on CBAs explains how coalitions have won benefits such as living wages, local hiring, affordable housing, environmental improvements and set-asides for facilities such as health clinics and youth centers. Includes a section on monitoring and enforcement as well as excerpts from key agreements.
Making the Connection: Transit-Oriented Development and Jobs
Good Jobs First 2006, Twenty-five positive case studies of local governments using economic development subsidies to promote job access via public transportation and affordable housing close to transit.
TIF, Greenfields and Sprawl
A 2008 Good Jobs First article for the Planning & Environmental Law journal of the American Planning Association examines tax increment financing (TIF) and how it has morphed from an incentive for inner-city revitalization to a sprawl-inducing subsidy in many states.
Uncle Sam’s Rusty Toolkit
Good Jobs First, 2008. A GJF study co-released with two labor federations and three other non-profit groups examines five major federal economic development programs. The accountability screens include whether the programs promote job access via public transportation (none does).