From Next City: During the spring and summer of 2025, we featured the SPARK10 winners in Next City through profiles about their work. Check out all of the articles - compiled here.

In the New York Times: Cities and small towns have tried to revitalize their downtowns by rolling back certain rules and requirements to help promote new developments and bring life to empty streets.

Now, they’re returning to an earlier era, when craftspeople such as food makers, woodworkers and apparel designers were integral parts of neighborhood life, and economic activity revolved around them.

Podcast: This week we’re joined by Ilana Preuss of Recast City to talk about small scale urban manufacturing. We discuss the commercial side of economic development, the types of jobs we are creating, and how to build community wealth in left behind places. We also talk about hot planning topics such as jobs housing balance, economic multipliers, and spreading the retail peanut butter too thin.

From Governing Magazine: Our on-again, off-again trade wars have an underlying theme: that tariffs on imports will boost domestic manufacturing. The assumption is that more U.S.-based large-scale manufacturing, like auto plants, will quickly scale up, but that kind of manufacturing takes years to plan and build, and economic uncertainty undercuts the potential. The far greater opportunity lies in small-scale manufacturing, which can ramp up quickly and broadly…

Press Release: Ilana Preuss, Founder & CEO of Recast City and a leading champion of small-scale manufacturing in the United States, announced today the inaugural SPARK 10, a first-ever list of 10 women who are sparking catalytic change through small-scale manufacturing in communities across America. Each of these women has developed an innovative model to address community and economic development needs through small-scale manufacturing. Their work deserves wide recognition, as it provides opportunities for replication.

From Next City: Diversifying often implies attracting new industries by luring them from elsewhere – often a zero-sum game, if the industries are simply shifting locations within the United States. But diversifying can more effectively mean growing new businesses and industries locally, as Baltimore is proving. The city is building out the most robust support for small-scale manufacturing of any city in the nation — and data released earlier this year shows that Baltimore is setting a new standard that should be recognized.

From Inside Philanthropy: The 2-1 decision by a federal appeals court panel in American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund earlier this year raised legal questions about how philanthropies can address pressing issues of racial inequity and provide grants to Black women entrepreneurs. The subsequent dismissal and out-of-court settlement of the case, announced on September 11, still leaves much unanswered and many opportunities left to explore. 

From Strong Towns: In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution by Strong Towns, Ilana Preuss joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss the importance of small-scale manufacturing and her experiences as a city builder.

From Governing Magazine: New York and other cities are changing their zoning codes to allow clean, small-scale production in their commercial corridors. Opening up retail spaces to “artisanal manufacturing” has many benefits for communities.

From Next City: One of the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic is the way it has transformed office use, threatening the viability of storefront retail in downtown office buildings. Owners of such commercial properties are now often exploring converting vacant retail space into restaurants and other experiential venues. But the range of alternative options needs to be expanded – and small-scale manufacturing offers a proven, yet often overlooked, solution.

From New York Daily News: Mayor Adams celebrated on March 6 the New York City Planning Commission’s approval of his “City of Yes for Economic Opportunity” proposal, which now proceeds to full City Council consideration on April 8. It is the largest overhaul of the city’s commercial and manufacturing zoning in 60 years, and it holds great promise for all New Yorkers. That’s because it allows small clean production businesses in commercial corridors in all five boroughs for the first time, and that will benefit everyone.

Reflecting on this past year, small businesses, downtowns, and what makes it all work (or not), I’ve been thinking about what we’ve learned. We can all admit, it’s been a weird year. Interest rates are up, spending in small businesses seem to be down, the pandemic is not the core conversation, but its impacts are definitely still lingering on our local economies.

The time is now for companies to take an active role in the future of downtowns – for the sake of their employees, their bottom line, and brand allegiance.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused massive retail vacancies in downtowns across the United States. These vacancies are hard enough to fill in previously thriving urban areas, let alone in already struggling Rust Belt areas and small cities. Yet Euclid, Ohio—a majority-Black Rust Belt city of 47,000 people, located on Lake Erie just east of Cleveland—is testing a creative approach to filling its vacant storefronts and paving the way for business districts of all sizes to recover and grow from within.

Research recently published by Harvard Business Review finds that entrepreneurship has the power to revitalize impoverished communities — if policymakers shift their focus away from venture capital-style, “scaling up” investing and instead design programs that help neighborhood businesses in “scaling deep.” My experience, working with small cities and towns across America, supports that finding and offers lessons for any community looking to build a resilient, home-grown economy.

Yes, I was up at 2am. It happens. I was thinking about the jobs we choose and the roles we serve in our cities. Why 2am? Who knows. Here is where I landed with that middle of the night thinking… What does it mean to choose our cities? Why do we opt to work with or for our city of choice? What are we each working to achieve? Why do we do this work?

America’s downtowns were struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic — with vacant storefronts common, especially in formerly industrial communities and smaller rural cities. Now they’re common in business districts across the country, too. It’s time to bring our downtowns back to life by making small-scale manufacturing a zoning priority — to increase business growth, add needed vitality, and enhance racial equity.

Holiday pop-up markets have become a welcome annual tradition, as they festively attract shoppers to America’s downtowns and main streets in search of one-of-a-kind gifts, handmade crafts and decorations, local food and other unique treats. Their return to our cities and towns this year is cause for special celebration as we work our way through the COVID-19 pandemic.