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As the post pandemic economy takes shape, one thing is certain. The structural impact of remote work dramatically undermines central business districts that over-emphasize traditional office work.  Historically, US office vacancy rates have hovered near 13%. As groups like CommercialEdge and Cushman & Wakefield have reported, office vacancy rates today are nearly 17%, with San Francisco at 20% and Houston above 23%. According to Brookings Institution estimates, office utilization is still less than 50% across major downtowns, indicating further headwinds for cities and landlords. This change also hits city coffers, as lower utilization results in lower office building valuations and therefore lower tax revenue. Estimates vary on the magnitude of the effect on city revenue: NYC’s comptroller estimated a decline of up to $1.1B annually or 1.4% of city tax revenues; places like Atlanta are likely to be affected at a far larger scale given their heavy reliance on commercial property taxes.  From there, the troubles compound: with fewer people coming downtown during office hours, the dominoes are already starting to fall, triggering second order effects on small business performance and transit ridership.

Over the past several years, this platform has returned multiple times to a geography found in cities of all sizes across the country – the neighborhood commercial corridor. With many others, we documented the harsh effects of the pandemic on neighborhood serving and locally owned businesses and offered practical recommendations for local stakeholders and state policymakers alike. To the greatest extent practicable, we have tried to be grounded and granular: using Investment Playbooks to identify concrete and fundable projects that can drive a burst of inclusive growth and entrepreneurship in real places, most recently 52nd Street in West Philadelphia.

One of my most rewarding activities this year is to serve as a member of the UK Urban Futures Commission.

On June 13, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority (the Port) launched the $100 million Cincinnati Jobs Bond. With the proceeds of the bond, the Port aims to acquire, remediate, and prepare manufacturing sites in two distressed areas of the city.

As the country witnesses a boom in manufacturing, Cincinnati and the Port aim to show how cities can participate in the new industrial resurgence. If successful, it provides a replicable model that can be scaled across similar legacy industrial cities.

Over the past eighteen months or so, I have become intensely interested in the industrial and energy transformation underway in the United States. The staggering volume of advanced manufacturing-oriented transactions, fueled by federal and state investments, is scrambling economic performance across and within metropolitan areas. My colleagues and I recently examined the emerging spatial geography of advanced manufacturing in a recent post entitled The Industrial Transition and the US Metropolis — The New Localism.

As many readers of New Localism know, I have grown increasingly concerned over the past few years about the narrow scope of federal investments that are now flowing through the US. The use of the term “narrow” may seem odd, given the unprecedented volume of federal funding for investments in infrastructure, climate, manufacturing, and innovation. This funding is long overdue and has the potential to accelerate the transition of our economy to a more inclusive and sustainable future.

By all accounts, the post pandemic period in the US is characterized by a remarkable industrial transition. From the Covid-19 pandemic to climate change, the war in Ukraine, and rising tensions with China, macro forces and ample federal investments are prompting the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing and, relatedly, an accelerated decarbonization of the US economy.

The Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) is the largest legislative effort in U.S. history designed to accelerate the country’s transition to an alternative energy and climate future. This Act is remarkable not only for its ambitions but for its disproportionate reliance on tax incentives, a fundamental difference in structure from other Biden era legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. A community hoping to maximize the value of IRA funding will need to organize networks of beneficiaries, intermediaries, and stakeholders in ways that integrate areas of practice (e.g., renewable energy, talent preparation and housing development) that are often kept separate and distinct.

In this time of intense polarization, it is rare to find an issue that both sides of the political spectrum can agree on. But small businesses seem to be one of the few exceptions. President Joe Biden has been a vocal champion of small businesses, emphasizing their importance as “the engines of our economic progress… the glue, the heart, and soul of our communities.” And Senator Marco Rubio, who led the Small Business Committee during the pandemic, has repeatedly emphasized the crucial role that small businesses play in job creation and the overall health of the economy. Despite this widespread support, there is still a critical missing piece: a consistent and robust data platform for small, diverse businesses.

One of the most intriguing questions to emerge in the aftermath of the pandemic is whether the confluence of seismic forces will disrupt the seemingly intractable pre-pandemic concentration of growth and prosperity in a small set of cities and metropolitan areas. These forces include the global health crisis itself but also Russia’s war in Ukraine, rising tensions with China, and the return of nation-shaping industrial policies.