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The two of us have been spending the bulk of our time in hyper-invention mode. To maximize the potential economic and social impact of recently enacted federal tax incentives, Mayor Garcetti’s Accelerator for America has engaged us to create a new tool — an Investment Prospectus — to enable cities, counties and states to identify concrete investable projects and propositions in designated Opportunity Zones. We are using Louisville, Oklahoma City and South Bend as our test cases and we are grateful to Mayors Greg Fischer, David Holt and Pete Buttigieg and their teams for being co-creators.

When we prepared the initial outline for The New Localism in late 2016, we included a chapter simply entitled “Blue Sky.” Our goal was to identify a series of concrete ideas for urban stakeholders — city governments, corporations, philanthropies, universities, investors — to raise and deploy large amounts of public, private and civic capital for transformative impact. What ultimately emerged was Chapter Nine, where we put forward a “provocative agenda for supporting and scaling up the most critical investments needed in cities in the areas of innovation, infrastructure, and inclusion.”

Our book tour has included several events hosted by impact investors. A question that comes up in these forums: how does New Localism connect to the activity of intermediaries and investment strategies that have a social mission while also generating returns for private investors?

There is a very direct connection. And we want the connection to grow in depth and capital commitment. But for that to happen, there has to be more of a focus on place within the impact field – urban, metropolitan, and rural – than has presently been the case. It is possible that the newly legislated opportunity tax incentive may enable more of a place-oriented connection for impact investors.

In the final chapter of The New Localism, we recommended that each city and metropolis needed to ask the simple question “What’s Your City’s Edge?” as part of pursuing a growth strategy with inclusive, innovative and sustainable outcomes. This question appeals directly to the rising demand for data — and evidence-driven decision-making among constituencies that lead urban economic development. It is also a central question for those concerned with social mobility and neighborhood investment.

Our friends at Centre for Cities in London recently hosted a New Localism event at The Shard, Renzo Piano’s inspiring and imposing skyscraper on the south bank of the Thames. Being London, nothing was visible from the upper floors of the building given rain and fog on the evening of our gathering. But the discussion was illuminating nonetheless, which you can listen to here —www.centreforcities.org/multimedia/event-catch-city-horizons-bruce-katz-cities-age-populism/.

At its core, The New Localism is a book about the rise of networks and networked governance as vehicles for problem solving. As we state in the Introduction:

The current suite of supersized economic, social and environmental challenges and the abdication of responsibilities by the federal government and many states demand new models of local governance. The most effective local governance occurs in places that not only deploy the formal and informal powers of government but create and steward new multi-sector networks to advance inclusive, sustainable and innovative growth. The logic is incontrovertible: if cities are networks of institutions and leaders, then institutions and leaders should co-govern cities. (emphasis added)

Over the past two months, we have visited 12 U.S. cities and counties as part of our New Localism book tour and met with public, private and civic leaders from dozens more.

In city after city, our discussions have quickly turned from a general synopsis of the themes and recommendations of the book to a specific discussion of a little-known tax incentive contained in the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that focuses on attracting private investment to distressed communities. Given the emphasis in our book on the importance of organizing civic and private capital, this was not unexpected.