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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.

In March 1988, 35 years ago almost to the day, a high-profile National Housing Task Force released a stirring report entitled A Decent Place to Live. The Task Force, headed by James Rouse, the famed Baltimore developer and founder of the Enterprise Foundation, and David Maxwell, the CEO of Fannie Mae, explored and elevated the nation’s housing challenges and recommended an ambitious 10-point program to provide housing opportunity. Its focus was primarily on federal policy reform, in large part as a response to the dismantling and de-funding of housing programs during the Reagan years.

I was a major consumer of Saturday morning cartoons in my childhood.

My favorite, by far, was Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. The plots were as simple as they were effective. Coyote would chase Roadrunner across deserts and mountains, concocting elaborate schemes to ensnare the fast-footed bird. The schemes always failed, with Coyote usually flying over a high cliff, realizing that he was suspended in midair, looking at the camera with an air of surprise and panic and then plummeting to the bottom of the abyss.

This newsletter has a longstanding affinity for metropolitan and regional thinking and action. As laid out in The Metropolitan Revolution (the 2013 book co-authored with Jennifer Bradley), metropolitan areas and their broader regions have emerged as the driving units of the global economy and the appropriate geography for solving cross-jurisdictional challenges like climate, economic competitiveness, housing, transportation, and workforce. The book extolled efforts in places as disparate as Cleveland, Denver, and Houston to bring governance into alignment with the reality that economic, environmental, and social challenges, alone and together, do not respect artificial, administrative boundaries. For these challenges, the geography of “real world” solutions are metropolitan in scale, even if general purpose local governments and specialized public authorities are bounded and fragmented.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, small business has served as the focal point of relief efforts, from the earliest local relief funds and the Paycheck Protection Program, to a total of $1 trillion in relief disbursed by the Small Business Administration. These funds, though enormous in volume, exposed the deficiencies of our existing capital systems when it comes to serving small and marginalized entrepreneurs and enterprises.

As a new year begins, I am reminded of the evocative image Jeanna Smialek put forth in the New York Times last March:

“The pandemic, and now geopolitical upheaval, have taken the economy and shaken it up like a snow globe. The flakes will eventually fall – there will be a new equilibrium – but things may be arranged differently when everything settles.”

As 2022 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about what the new (dis)order in Washington means for the role of cities and metropolitan areas and the political, business, philanthropic, university and community leaders who power them. The return of divided government at the federal level promises a new level of volatility and instability in our nation’s capital and, as in the past, de facto delegation of responsibility for getting stuff done to local doers and problem solvers, what Jeremy Nowak and I labeled the “New Localism.” My prediction: 2023 will, once again, be the Year of the Local.

Over the past four months, the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, The Enterprise Center (TEC), and the Philadelphia Equity Alliance (PEA) have partnered to develop an Investment Playbook for the 52nd Street Corridor in West Philadelphia.

Join us, Wednesday, December 7 at 1pm ET, for the Innovative Finance Playbook launch webinar; register here.

Last week’s election settled control of the Congress for the next two years, with profound implications for the focus and functioning of the federal government. With Washington headed for a return to a heightened level of partisan gridlock, responsibility for progress on a broad array of national challenges will largely revert to networks of public, private and civic leaders at the local and metropolitan scale. These leaders will be on the front lines of not only deploying unprecedented federal investments but also responding to complex market dynamics. Organizing capital, in novel ways, will be the order of the day.

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.