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The political earthquake in the UK has global reverberations. With the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Britain is about to have a new prime minister for the 7th time in the past decade. Nothing new there! What’s remarkable is the ascension of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, as Starmer’s successor.

To move from Metro Mayor to Prime Minister is unusual in any electoral system, but particularly in Britain, which is one of the most financially centralized nations in the developed world.

One of the most rewarding things for me is to reengage with people I’ve worked with decades back.  A few months ago, I received a welcome email from Rey Ramsey.  I first met Rey after he had assumed the presidency in 1994 of (what was then called) the Enterprise Foundation. I was then serving as Chief of Staff to Henry Cisneros, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

It was clear to me from our initial meeting that Rey was going to be a fellow traveler in the world of housing and cities and metropolitan economies more broadly. He exhibited an affirmative energy that was truly infectious as well as a level of open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity that was greatly appreciated.

Much of the talk about artificial intelligence’s role in the built environment has, unsurprisingly, been about the massive amounts of computing power the new technology requires, and the real estate, construction, and energy that compute requires.

This article was originally published as part of the IEDC Centennial Thought Leader Series on May 26, 2026: Economic Development in a Dangerous World – International Economic Development Council

About a decade ago, Gina Raimondo, the Governor of Rhode Island, placed a call to Bill Haslam, the Governor of Tennessee. Raimondo, a Democrat, was trying to steward a small state in New England that had struggled for decades with deindustrialization and globalization. Haslam, a Republican, was trying to elevate a border state from middle of the pack performance to higher levels of innovation and relevance.

Governor Raimondo was looking to learn from and emulate Governor Haslam. Haslam had done something ambitious and remarkable that intrigued Raimondo. Building on an initiative he had piloted as mayor of Knoxville, Haslam had championed and pushed through legislation to make community college free in the state of Tennessee. Called the Tennessee Promise, the legislation had made community college free to any high school student that meet certain criteria.

Raimondo, seeking to even the playing field for Rhode Island students, liked what she heard, and within several months of the call the Rhode Island Promise emerged as the Ocean State’s adaptation of the Volunteer State’s signature effort. For both states, this investment has exceeded expectations, with measurable and meaningful impacts in both states on the numbers of residents educated, firms recruited, jobs grown and revenues generated.

These remarks were prepared for Accelerator for America’s Spring 2026 gathering in Riverside CA and partially delivered on a panel entitled “Skating to Where the Economic Puck is Going.”  The panel, expertly moderated by Accelerator’s CEO, Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, included Montgomery AL Mayor Steven Reed, Laurel Blatchford of Delivery Associates and Donald Jones of Next Street.

After nearly fifteen years of robust rent growth, many renters across the country are finally seeing something unimaginable a few years ago: rent relief. According to CoStar, U.S. apartment rents after concessions are approximately flat on a year-over-year basis. Out of the approximately 200 markets tracked by CoStar with more than 100,000 households, over one-third have experienced declining rents with most of these markets concentrated in 10 sunbelt and mountain region states.

A range of market types are emerging in the country, which have implications not only for developers and investors but also for broader public responses. In this piece, we boil down the variance across the country to two admittedly broad market types – Supply Growth Metros and Supply Stagnant Metros – to illustrate the different policy responses that align with market dynamics.

Over the past several years, the cost of housing has vaulted atop many Americans’ lists for what is driving our current affordability crisis. Much of the debate around how to lower housing costs has centered around two options: regulatory reforms (e.g., zoning changes, minimum lot sizes, or parking requirements) or financial reforms (e.g., making it cheaper to build housing). While the former has received a lot of needed attention through the abundance movement, the latter deserves an equal amount of focus: irrespective of these regulatory barriers, it has become too expensive to build.

As the U.S. grapples with a multi layered housing crisis, the need for states to act strategically and mobilize public, private and civic resources has never been higher.  In the near term, that includes shaping the next round of Opportunity Zones. Yes, Opportunity Zones.

As the U.S. grapples with a housing affordability crisis, the single-minded focus of policymakers, practitioners and advocates alike is on boosting housing production to redress the radical mismatch between housing demand and supply that has emerged across the country. The metric of this era for decisionmakers, whether at the national, state or local level, is “housing units built.”

My strong conviction is that “units built” is not the only metric that the nation should focus on. The totalizing focus on “new units” causes us to lose sight of the impact that housing — its design, its location, its tenant mix — has on life opportunities and social progress.