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This article was originally published by The MJ on October 7, 2025: https://www.themj.co.uk/modern-city-governance-york-style. The MJ (Municipal Journal) is a UK magazine “designed for the people who work in the UK local government sector.”

In 1898, the modern city of New York was born.  The consolidation of separate governmental bodies and territories into 5 united boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island) was a masterful stroke of government reform that has paid dividends for generations. It is simply impossible to imagine the rise of New York City as one of the preeminent global cities without the 19th century act of consolidation, its evolution over time and the strategic growth it enabled.

One of the hallmarks of this period is that places will need to work harder for themselves. While the federal political environment and the global economic context shift quickly, localities must find their own place in this new reality. To that end, we are constantly on the hunt for places and institutions that are successfully leveraging their existing assets to build and scale new local industries. The Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) is a particularly unique example of this: it has evolved from a group of water treatment facilities to a revenue-generating hub for water innovation, complete with nearly a dozen patents and global partnerships. HRSD is on the path to seed a new water technology cluster in Hampton Roads, providing a powerful compliment to the region’s existing defense-focused economy.

One of the most remarkable things about the United States is its limitless potential for renewal and innovation from the ground up. As New Localism has consistently observed, power in our nation is widely distributed across the republic via levels of government (states for sure but also counties, cities, municipalities and a plethora of public or quasi-public agencies) as well as networks of private, civic and philanthropic institutions and leaders. This expands the purview beyond traditional constitutional federalism (which only recognizes two layers) to a “whole of nation” construct.

Economic geography — the study of the spatial organization of cities, metropolitan areas and regions — is taking on renewed importance given mega trends around the rise of geopolitical tensions, the reshoring of advanced manufacturing and the acceleration of next generation technologies.

Manufacturing products and processes are being fundamentally reshaped by a broad array of rapidly advancing technologies. Take the production of semiconductors, a major focus of industrial policy in the United States.  The reshoring of semiconductor production has been accompanied not only by innovations in chip design and production processes (implicating technologies that range from artificial intelligence to machine learning to advanced materials) but also innovations in the design and construction of data centers.

Abundance, the blockbuster book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, two journalists we have long admired, has rightfully spent weeks on bestseller lists and has accordingly dictated months of policy discourse.

The book delivers on many levels and deserves the accolades it has received. The central thesis of the book — that it is time for the nation to build again and embrace abundance over scarcity — is timely and compelling. It has the potential not only to galvanize positive change across multiple areas of domestic life but also to alter our politics by showing that modern societies can function and provide affordable goods and services for broad segments of our population.

This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania on August 13, 2025: How Pennsylvania Can Lead the Physical AI Revolution | RealClearPennsylvania

As with every great industrial leap, the race among states to lead the AI revolution is reaching a fever pitch. We are living through a transformation that could shape the 21st century even more profoundly than railroads and steel defined the late 19th century, or the personal computer and the internet transformed the close of the 20th. We are now entering the steep part of the hockey stick curve for AI innovation—when breakthroughs move from research labs and pilot projects into the physical world, driving exponential changes in how we produce energy, manufacture goods, move people and freight, and secure national defense. In this age of “future shock” innovation, progress is inseparable from energy and infrastructure—and infrastructure, in turn, is inseparable from political will. The states that will win are those able to cut through permitting bottlenecks, align policy with industry needs, and move capital to the ground quickly. Speed, strategy, and scale—mirroring the first movers in tech’s Magnificent Seven—will decide who builds the competitive platforms that fuel generations of growth.

The housing market in the United States has reached a crisis point. Americans, rural, suburban and urban alike, are facing the most extreme housing pressures seen in generations, precipitated by the failure of housing supply to keep pace with housing demand.

Periods of market and technological upheaval tend to catalyze financial innovation. Given the confluence of geopolitical tensions, the acceleration of next generation technologies, the implications of AI and reshoring for energy demand, the severe imbalances in the housing sector, and, most recently, the radical scaling back of federal government programs and policies heretofore seen as sacred and invincible, an era of financial experimentation should now be upon us.

There’s been much talk of federal spending this year. Two of us have written on the flow of federal resources, and how locals prepare for major shifts. As we have noted, a critical part of federal funding flows through public procurement, in addition to federal entitlements and programs.

Frankly, procurement writ large forms a substantial part of the economy, touching every geography via federal, state, and local purchasing, in addition to procurement by corporations and nonprofit institutions. While it is difficult to say with certainty how spending patterns will shift in public procurement, the magnitude will continue to be immense and unmatched.

Early last month, the Vatican named Pope Leo XIV to lead the Catholic faithful. The elevation of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was a surprise pick.  Chicago-born, Prevost had spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and became a cardinal only in 2023.