MSU EDA University Center for

Regional Economic Innovation

E-Update | January 2023

The CCED is excited to announce Co-Learning Plan authors, Dr. Louise Jezierski and Dr. Sejuti Das Gupta, as a part of MSU’s EDA University Center for Regional Economic Innovation 2023 cohort. Making Ends Meet: Women’s Work, the Care Sector and Regional Informal Economies: Detroit examines how women workers and employers navigate the informal care and personal service sectors of the Detroit metropolitan region, focusing on immigrant and adjacent neighborhoods. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic-based economic crisis has impacted women with layoffs in service sector jobs or leaving to meet family care needs. Women engage the labor market informally through social networks and “brokerage institutions” including neighborhood institutions, e.g. temples, churches, and schools, to find work and household services. The research design employs mixed methodologies - archival data analysis and in-depth interviews - to map connective networks between formal and informal work that sustains a circular economy in greater Detroit. 

MSU’s EDA University Center for Regional Economic Innovation is happy to award Dr. John (Jake) Parcell for the Co-Learning Plan, Leveraging the Planning Process to Create a Model of Engagement for Communities in Need. Jake will focus this project year on leveraging the planning process to improve regional efforts in high percentage ALICE communities, as the process can be difficult due to a lack of capacity. This Co-Learning seeks to develop a model for organizations to use to make the planning process operate more effectively for communities who lack the technical and institutional capacity to achieve their greatest results. This will be accomplished through a rigorous review of best practices and a Delphi Study of volunteer officials from commissions to identify ways to improve the planning process.  

Congratulations to Dr. Mark Wilson on his Co-Learning Plan award, Opportunity or Betrayal?: The Promise and Perils of Electric Mobility. The project team includes Dr. Zeenat Kotval-Karamchandani and MSU Ph.D. student in Planning, Design & Construction, Shane Wilson. The growing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) carries many potential benefits for sustainability and mobility, yet not all residents and communities may benefit equally. New technologies disrupt current systems and behaviors that may include uneven impacts on communities based on income, race, identity, and location. This proposal will examine the social implications of EVs for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) residents of Michigan, both at the state level and in urban/rural areas of concentration. In particular, the focus will be access to the benefits of EVs (mobility, employment) and experience of disadvantages such as environmental damage and health.

New Research Assistants!