Urban Manufacturing Alliance Wins Commitment From Clinton Global Initiative

On June 30, former President Bill Clinton announced the support of his Clinton Global Initiative for the Urban Manufacturing Alliance, a new partnership between the Pratt Center, SF Made, and other organizations working on behalf of small manufacturers in U.S. cities.

“This is a very important time for America to look for homegrown solutions to the jobs crisis,” said President Clinton at the initiative's Chicago summit. “We do not do enough to generate internal economic development, particularly in areas of high unemployment.” Turning to Pratt Center Director Adam Friedman and Kate Sofis, executive director of SF Made, Clinton added, “I am very happy about this and I want to congratulate all these folks for their commitment.”

Watch the video of President Clinton’s full announcement of the Clinton Global Initiative’s Commitment to Action for the Urban Manufacturing Alliance.

The Urban Manufacturing Alliance is a new project launched by the Pratt Center and SF Made to galvanize support for local urban manufacturers across major U.S. cities and to connect the local networks that serve them. The City of New York and City and County of San Francisco have also committed to advancing the alliance. The organizations will share their strategies and best practices, interconnect the cities' supply chains, and research issues of mutual concern. More broadly, the alliance will put into action an influential model for collaboration and organic growth for urban manufacturing, as an alternative to the prevailing economic development strategy of competitive smokestack-chasing. The alliance will strengthen the national manufacturing sector as a whole, resulting in meaningful growth in both local employment and numbers of manufacturing companies in U.S. cities. As detailed in a recent report from the Pratt Center and Brookings Institution, of the approximately 51,400 small manufacturers in the United States, one third are concentrated in the ten largest cities and employ more than 830,000 people, one in ten of them in New York City.

In its first year, the Urban Manufacturing Alliance will bring at least three other cities into the group, begin to research and develop economic development strategies to advance manufacturing across multiple cities, and develop a national sourcing database that will facilitate procurement between urban manufacturers and among buyers seeking materials, components and products.

“Cities are constantly struggling with the same issues and reinventing the wheel,” says Friedman. “This is a chance to lear from one another, share best practices, and build a national coalition to advance federal policy in support of urban manufacturing.”