Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 36
changing land use regulations to allow new infrastructure to be used to its fullest potential. This includes encouraging mixeduse development where new housing can be developed near transportation facilities. In addition, cities can adjust parking
requirements to deprioritize car use in favor of encouraging people to bike, walk, and use public transit.
Economic developers can help improve sof transportation infrastructure by supporting eforts to expand funding for ongoing
operations and to develop sites more intensively near transit systems that support expanded ridership. These ongoing actions
will improve the community’s capacity to respond to and recover from the next disaster.
Child Care and School Infrastructure
The unprecedented March 2020 closure of child care and school facilities statewide caused many parents to leave the
workforce to care for children at home. Women were disproportionally impacted by child care and school closures, but all
parents and families were afected. The pandemic highlighted the fact that child care and schools are essential infrastructure
systems, and the business community realized this when many schools quickly adopted distance-learning teaching methods.
Employees started working from home, and children attended virtual school from home. Essentially, inadequate school
infrastructure contributed to 2.5 million women nationwide leaving the workforce since early 2020 and to a declining labor
force participation rate.20 Companies already facing dificulties filling open positions have struggled to hire new employees and
revitalize their workforce.
Local governments can help improve child care and school infrastructure by supporting education and child care as a top-tier
economic development priority. Communities with excellent schools are also successful communities where people want to live
and businesses want to locate. Ongoing support of local school funding measures is important, as are land use decisions that
encourage safe pedestrian access, bike lanes, and other methods of transporting children to and from school. Making education
and child care a priority will generate long-term economic development benefits and position a community to better respond to
and recover from the next disaster.
Economic Development Takeaway
Making education and child care a priority will generate long-term economic
development benefits and position a community to better respond to and recover
from the next disaster.
Health Care Infrastructure
A community's health care infrastructure consists of the hospitals, clinics, and other for-profit and nonprofit providers in the
immediate community and neighboring region. The inequities in health care access have become a significant constraint to
engaging many people in the workforce and preparing them to participate in a rapidly changing economy. The pandemic clearly
demonstrated that an employee’s health is critical to business success and community public health is a critical component
of infrastructure. While it is well-known that millions of Americans lack access to health care insurance, the pandemic exposed
additional weaknesses of our health care infrastructure systems.
Disasters such as COVID-19, which has killed over 80,000 California residents as of February 2022 and caused hundreds of
thousands of hospitalizations statewide, clearly demonstrate the inadequacies of our health care infrastructure.21 Concerns
about inadequate health care infrastructure also apply to future pandemics or a massive earthquake that could injure hundreds
or thousands of people (who may require hospitalization) or prevent people from going to work.
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28
See https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat01.pdf for 2020 employment and labor force participation rates.
Data as of February 8, 2022. Source: https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/CovidDataAndTools.aspx
CALED | Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook
