Leveraging the Lakefront: Spurring Inclusive Growth in Cleveland, Ohio Through Urban Redevelopment

How can a newly elected mayor leverage a redevelopment project to drive inclusive growth in a city facing entrenched disparities? Mayor Justin Bibb of Cleveland, Ohio, prioritized revitalizing the city’s North Coast waterfront as part of a broader strategy to address social and economic inequity. The project sought to integrate cultural landmarks while navigating financial constraints and competing priorities such as public safety, underperforming schools, and revitalizing underserved neighborhoods. How can mayors balance visionary planning with practical coalition-building and what strategies can ensure that transformative projects meet the needs of all residents?

The Chiapas Puzzle

For the twenty years following the Zapatista uprising (1994-2013), the federal government had placed a lot of resources and policy attention in an effort to reduce the large income gaps between Chiapas and the rest of Mexico. Public investment in schools, hospitals, and conditional cash transfer programs had been implemented, resulting in a significant improvement that did reduce the gap in terms of educational and health outcomes. Massive infrastructure projects had been undertaken to upgrade Chiapas’ roads, ports and airports, boosting the connectivity of the state with markets within the state and elsewhere in Mexico. And yet, twenty years later the income gap between workers in Chiapas and the rest of Mexico had deepened, and Chiapas remains the poorest state in Mexico, with three quarters of its population poor and close to half in extreme poverty. Large productivity gaps – as proxied by wages – are not only observed between states, but have also expanded dramatically within the three sectors employing two-­thirds of the workers in Chiapas: Agriculture, wholesale and retail, and manufacturing. One year into his term as Finance Minister for the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2013-2018), Luis Videgaray ponders the statistical evidence available and baffles at the puzzle.