Newsletters

This article was originally published by the Financial Times on November 22, 2024

Over the past twenty years, I’ve had the chance to observe a remarkable experiment in urban governance reform: England’s efforts to devolve more power to local decisionmakers through metro mayors, creating, in essence, a new layer of government in England.

A version of this article first appeared in Governing Magazine on October 31, 2024

The accelerating pace of generative AI is driving a more physical economic revolution, one that goes deeper than digital chatbots enhancing worker productivity. This opens the door for transformation in cities that embrace its potential.

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” So famously said Bette Davis’ character in the classic 1950 movie All About Eve.  Replace “night” with “four years” and we just begin to have a sense of what Tuesday’s election means for the world and our nation.

The election of Donald Trump and the return of one-party rule to Congress has once again ushered in a period of volatility and uncertainty for US cities and metropolitan areas, the places that house the bulk of our population, generate the preponderance of our GDP and drive the accelerating pace of technological innovation.

As exemplified by Trump’s early Cabinet appointments, these globally significant places are about to experience an unprecedented set of shocks, some aired during the election, many not. To withstand what’s coming, and even take advantage of the disruption, cities and metropolitan areas, individually and collectively, will need to organize themselves in equally unprecedented ways.

The time for housing deliberation is over; the time for housing action has begun.

With that simple mandate, the National Housing Crisis Task Force today released From Crisis to Transformation: A Federal Housing Policy Agenda.

Treating the housing crisis like a crisis means the federal government must fundamentally restructure the way it is organized, substantially boost the production and preservation of housing, and take bold action to provide a housing safety net. Taken together, the Task Force’s recommended actions will reduce regulatory barriers and provide sufficient support and incentives to produce more than 750,000 new housing units per year, protect and preserve our existing housing stock, and create the institutions necessary to fundamentally transform the housing sector for the twenty-first century.

As we’ve written before, the U.S. is in the midst of a monumental effort to revive its industrial economy. This transition is resulting in new opportunities and a new industrial geography that is shifting power away from long-dominant “superstar cities” towards cities and metros with a propensity for industrial production. This New Economic Order is being shaped by the need to remilitarize, reshore, and decarbonize the economy, leading to a surge in domestic production across the country.

This month, the US Department of Defense (“DOD”) released two signature documents that remind us of the outsized effect that defense industrial spending has on state and metro economies and the extent to which the defense industrial base is dependent upon smart state and local action.

This is the fourth and last in a series of initial policy newsletters being produced alongside the National Housing Crisis Task Force, which will soon release a national policy agenda with recommendations that the federal government can implement to address our housing crisis . The Task Force, an ambitious, two-year project to bring the most promising innovations in housing production, preservation, and finance to communities across the country, was launched in July by the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and Accelerator for America (AFA). If you want to make sure you receive all updates and reports from the Task Force, please register here.

This is the third in a series of policy newsletters being produced alongside the National Housing Crisis Task Force, which will release a national policy agenda with recommendations that the federal government can implement to address our housing crisis later this month. The Task Force, an ambitious, two-year project to bring the most promising innovations in housing production, preservation, and finance to communities across the country, was launched in July by the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and Accelerator for America (AFA). If you want to make sure you receive all updates and reports from the Task Force, please register here.

The National Housing Crisis Task Force, in collaboration with the Bipartisan Policy Center will be co-hosting an event in-person and online, on October 24, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDT. Please register for the event, Scaling Local Innovations for Achieving Housing Affordability, here.

Note: This newsletter was initially published by Governing Magazine on September 26, 2024

The 2020s will be remembered as the era when artificial intelligence sparked not only an economic transformation, but a new industrial revolution. As Goldman Sachs put it last year, AI has shifted from an “excitement” phase to a “deployment” reality, permeating critical sectors of the economy including defense, health care and energy with rapid speed.

This is the second in a series of policy newsletters being produced alongside the National Housing Crisis Task Force, which will release a national policy agenda with recommendations that the federal government can implement to address our housing crisis later this fall. The Task Force, an ambitious, two-year project to bring the most promising innovations in housing production, preservation, and finance to communities across the country, was launched in July by the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and Accelerator for America (AFA). If you want to make sure you receive all updates and reports from the Task Force, please register here.

This is the first in a series of policy newsletters being produced alongside the National Housing Crisis Task Force, which will release a national policy agenda with recommendations that the federal government can implement to address our housing crisis later this fall. If you want to make sure you receive all updates and reports from the Task Force, please register here.

Housing is finally having its moment in the spotlight. Not a day goes by without national and local media elevating housing as one of the most central challenges facing our country.  The housing crisis, largely subjugated to the sidelines for years, has rightfully become a bona fide election issue.[1] During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Vice President Harris mentioned housing no less than five times. And for good reason.