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Over the past year, the federal government has been making up for lost time on climate-related investment. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (enacted in November 2021) and the more recent Inflation Reduction Act (enacted this past August) provide hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding to support a broad range of much-needed investments in renewable energy generation and storage, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, energy efficiency upgrades, and other climate-related concerns.

For the past several decades, public private partnerships (or PPPs, as they are traditionally known), have been part of the urban lexicon. The phrase is often used to describe cross-sectoral collaborations to design, finance, build and operate infrastructure projects. More broadly, the concept describes the ways in which cities and metropolitan areas solve problems through networks of public, private, civic institutions and leaders.

Housing markets in the United States today are rapidly changing. We are bombarded in the news about corporations purchasing homes across sunbelt metros like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Phoenix. Reporting and research highlight the challenges faced by renters in private equity-backed properties, from maintenance requests gone unfulfilled to evictions as a core part of a fee-based business model. During the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, homebuyers fought over a limited supply of for-sale housing, often finding out that they were beat by all-cash corporate offers. Now we wonder: will these homes ever come back on the market, and what happens to the tenants who live in these new rental properties?

This past Tuesday I was privileged to present at the Meeting of G7 Urban Ministers in Potsdam Germany.  My keynote address was entitled A G7 Roadmap for Sustainable Urban Development and can be accessed here.  At the outset, I want to thank Mary Rowe, the President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute, for the time spent in reviewing multiple versions of the talk.

It is no secret that the country’s housing market is suffering from an acute supply and demand imbalance. Supply has lagged with decades of under-building adding up to a severe shortage. Years of latent, suppressed demand have been released by healthier consumer financials and remote work flexibility. While the Federal Reserve has temporarily poured cold water on some demand segments by increasing mortgage rates at record pace, our long-term issues won’t be solved without generating more units to meet growing housing needs.

As the implementation of the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act picks up steam, cities, counties and states are scrambling to identify projects that can deliver a new vision of mobility, connectivity, sustainability and quality placemaking.

Erie, Pennsylvania is on a roll. Like many communities in the Midwest, this city and county experienced the harsh effects of deindustrialization, decline and disinvestment. Over the past decade, however, a group of dedicated local government, corporate, university and civic leaders, spurred by Erie Insurance Company’s growth and investment, has begun to build the city back. There is no better evidence of this fact than a substantial recent development: today, Erie has one of the most ambitious Investment Playbooks in the country and a bold new governance model to ensure its sound implementation.

Join us, Tuesday, June 21, 1pm ET for a conversation on the potential of supply chain financing.

Supply Chain Finance: Innovations for Supporting Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Register Here

Yesterday, Accelerator for America, the Nowak Metro Finance Lab and Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth released Averting a Lost Decade: Rethinking an Inclusive Recovery for Disadvantaged Neighborhoods.

The Procurement Economy is having its moment in the sun. Last week the National Minority Supplier Development Council held a major conference in Chicago. The conference was an all-star event, attracting Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, federal officials like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and EDA Administrator Alejandra Castillo, private sector leaders like John Rogers and Magic Johnson and a plethora of leaders from financial institutions, public authorities, constituency organizations and local governments.