NYIRN Research and Advocacy

While the manufacturing landscape has changed in New York City over the last 40 years, local industry continues to be a vital economic contributor by supplying goods and services to the city's other sectors as well as providing good jobs for residents. These small local manufacturers are responding to growing consumer demand by adapting their product lines and/or developing new goods and services to be sold in the green economy. As a result of these transitions, there is a particular opportunity to expand and create jobs in the 'building products' sub-sector and within the manufacture of products that promote energy efficiency.

New York City is the undisputed center of the diamond and jewelry industry for North America and much of the world. While New York’s diamond and jewelry businesses are located in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, a single block on West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in midtown-Manhattan is the epicenter of these two industries. These businesses generate over $24 billion in economic activity and employ over 22,000 people. This report focuses on this economic activity and the impact of this extraordinary block that is New York’s Diamond District.

The report offers an assessment of the industry’s needs based on government data and interviews with local businesses. It represents a renewed call to City and State government to help maintain the competitiveness of the diamond and jewelry sectors through financial and technical assistance.  Additionally, it presents strategies that the 47th Street BID can pursue immediately in order to address some of the issues on the street as well as help businesses plan for the future.

Pratt Center and Brookings Institution release strategy for making cities the center of an industrial business boom

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Revitalizing American manufacturing is widely acknowledged as vital to our country’s economic recovery and long-term prosperity—but first, rusty old assumptions about what actually gets produced in the USA need to disappear and give way to policies that support today's budding businesses: small, speciality operations that are increasingly being located in the nation's cities. A report by the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and the Pratt Center for Community Development, “The Federal Role in Supporting Urban Manufacturing,” describes the changing economic geography of America’s production sector—and how the federal government should work with state and local leaders to better support its growth and development.

The report looks at how cities, including New York, have made sure that budding manufacturing businesses have room and resources to grow. While conventional wisdom says that urban manufacturing is in decline because it's no longer necessary, the Pratt Center/Brookings research found that for decades urban manufacturing has been sidelined by government policies that control the money, land and other resources businesses need to succeed. The report outlines essential steps to put government to work in support of manufacturing instead of against it, and open up job growth where it's most urgently needed—in the cities where the workers, transportation and markets already exist.

This study shows that dozens of hotels, superstores, entertainment and other non-industrial uses have moved into areas the Bloomberg administration designated to protect important manufacturing jobs.