Tag Archives: public policy

Lecture Series #2: “Greening the Nation’s Capital: the Promise and Potential of the Sustainable DC Plan” by Harriet Tregoning

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HTJoin us on March 28, 2013, as Harriet Tregoning, Director of the District of Columbia Office of Planning, discusses the Sustainable DC Plan and how her office, along with the District Department of the Environment and other partner agencies, plans to transform the District into a “more socially equitable, environmentally responsive and economically prosperous community.”

Hosted by: Urban Affairs and Planning Program
All events will convene at the Virginia Tech Research Center Arlington
900 N Glebe Rd, Arlington, VA 22203
RSVP by March 28th

East/West Falls Church Room

6:00 – 6:30 PM UAP Alumni Networking Reception with students and prospective students
6:30-7:30 PM (Presentation)
7:30-8:30 (discussion)
Light Refreshments will be served

Full Flyer Available here.

Schilling assists the City of Newburgh with the launch of its Code Enforcement Initiative

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Schilling MI Photo

Director Joe Schilling

Joseph Schilling, Interim Director of the Metropolitan Institute and Professor and Program Director of the Urban Affairs & Planning Program-Alexandria, partnered with Kermit Lind, retired Cleveland Marshall College of Law professor in the City of Newburgh, NY to head the launch of its new Strategic Code Enforcement Initiative.  Both are law professors with extensive experience in helping cities rebound from near catastrophic conditions.  Click here for more details.

Cities in Transition: A Guide for Practicing Planners

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Earlier this month Metropolitan Institute Associate Director Joseph Schilling and Alan Mallach of the Brookings Institution were in Los Angeles at the American Planning Association’s annual conference promoting the new PAS report on Cities in Transition. The report offers practicing planners a comprehensive menu of place-based strategies for addressing different dimensions of urban distress—from the reclamation of vacant properties to rebuilding local government and civic capacity. Schilling and Mallach view cities in transition through a typology that includes older industrial, shrinking cities, fast growing boom-n-bust cities, declining first tier suburbs and small, but growing gateway cities. All of these cities, large and small, east and west, share similar challenges of trying to confront the convergence of many socioeconomic transitions.

Distressed cities typically have chronic or acute urban decline, decreasing revenue and resources, loss of population, and high rates of poverty and crime, etc. These challenges are often concentrated in poor neighborhoods, but are now spreading to more stable neighborhoods thanks in part to our overall economic downturn. Today cities of all stripes face changes in maintaining previous or consistent growth rates as they goes through their own sets of transitions. Many cities exacerbate the problems by failing to strategically target existing resources.

In light of these complexities, the report sets forth a strategic policy planning framework that could help communities create new visions and coordinate all of these moving pieces into a more efficient suite of policy and planning interventions. Schilling explains, “Planners in distressed cities should reflect on the past, assess the present, and realign resources. It’s important for planners to break old habits and think critically about the city’s slower growth trajectory.” The report will help planners and community leaders recalibrate classic planning strategies and tools, such as comprehensive plans and zoning codes to be consistent and effective within the new reality. The report contains excerpts of “Text Box Interviews” that examine the realities of planning in distressed cities through the eyes of planners and community leaders who are experimenting with new approaches. The complete interview as well as additional interviews can be found at the Institute’s Vacant Properties Research Network site.

The PAS report on Cities in Transition was a joint project with the American Planning Association with support from The Ford Foundation’s Metropolitan program and is part of the Metropolitan Institute’s larger Vacant Property Research Initiative. Copies may be purchased at at APA Bookstore.

 

 

 

Faculty Fellow Showcase: Ralph Hall

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Ralph Hall in Senegal

Faculty Fellow Ralph Hall, assistant professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning program in the School of Public and International Affairs, explores the transdisciplinary approach to solving sustainability problems and its applications in many corners of the world.

Q. What are your main research projects at the present time?

My research interests currently fall into three broad areas that are linked by the theme of sustainability. The first and broadest area relates to identifying ways to transform industrial and emerging economies towards sustainable development. Over the past ten years I have been working with Prof. Nicholas Ashford (at MIT) on a textbook that explores the many dimensions of sustainable development and how national, multinational, and international political and legal mechanisms can be used to further sustainable development. In 2011, we published the textbook – Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State (Yale University Press) – and have since been working on articles to further extend this work. I would describe this research area as transdisciplinary, which means that the problems being addressed require solutions that can originate from any discipline. This first research area builds the broad foundation for my other two research interests.

My second research area focuses on sustainable transportation and continues the research I began with my PhD at MIT. I research decision-support frameworks that transportation agencies and practitioners can use to transition their transportation systems towards sustainability. This research also has broader applicability to other sectors of the economy and I hope to expand it into energy systems, agriculture, etc. My most recent work in this area relates to the design of performance measurement frameworks for transportation agencies. In 2011, I was an adviser to a research project that created A Guidebook for Sustainability Performance Measurement for Transportation Agencies. This guidebook was informed by best-practice case studies and practitioner interviews and has inspired a second book that I am working on with Dr. Henrik Gudmundsson (Technical University of Denmark), Dr. Greg Marsden (University of Leeds), and Dr. Josias Zietsman (Texas A&M University). This book will provide students and practitioners with a deep understanding of the basic concepts of sustainability as well as a coherent framework for how to apply them consistently in the context of transportation planning, management, and decision making at different levels of an agency. The purpose of the textbook is to outline an approach for measuring the performance of transportation systems against key sustainability principles.

My final research area relates to sustainable water supply and sanitation systems in developing regions. This applied, empirical research began during my postdoc at Stanford University and has since taken me to India, Colombia, Senegal, and Mozambique.

Continue reading →

Comparative Travel Behavior between the US and Germany

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Ralph BuehlerFaculty Fellow, Ralph Buehler, presented at the APA’s Tuesday evening speaker series on travel behavior, transport policy and sustainable transport differences and similarities between Germany and the US. This presentation reviewed daily travel behavior in the two countries and examined the policies in Germany that have encouraged more walking, bicycling, and public transport use.

The complete audio  presentation is available streaming on the APA site.

Faculty Fellow Showcase: Margaret Cowell

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Professor Margaret Cowell, assistant professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning program in the School of Public and International Affairs and Faculty Fellow to the Metropolitan Institute, shared some of her background and research highlights recently.

 Q: Please tell us a bit about your academic background.

I attended Brown University in Providence, RI, with the intention of becoming a medical doctor, however an undergraduate urban studies course sparked my curiosity and I quickly became obsessed with the subject and took every city-based course I could. I had the opportunity to study abroad in Cork, Ireland, a post-industrial city that felt much like the towns I’d grown up near in upstate New York, and a little like Buffalo or Cleveland. During my time abroad, Cork was seeing some growth with the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and my time there showed me another face of urban development in distressed areas.  I then pursued a Masters degree in planning at the University of Buffalo – another excellent location for studying urban development in shrinking cities. Several years working and conducting research at the Federal Reserve Bank cemented my love for research. Driven by a desire to develop my own research agenda, I went back to school to pursue a PhD at Cornell University, working with Rolf Pendall and Susan Christopherson on transitional economies and regional resilience.

Q: What are your main research projects at the present time?

Currently, I’m working on a book manuscript to help us better understand how larger cities of the Midwest responded to deindustrialization in the 1970s and 1980s. The research is built on interviews I conducted with development officials, civic leaders, public officials, and private sector representatives in Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh to get a sense on the decision-making process and the economic development planning response crafted in each of these places. Continue reading →

IBM Center for the Business of Government: Citizen Apps as a Democratizing Technology

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The Metropolitan Institute is pleased to announce a new grant from the IBM Center for the Business of Government for our research project, Citizen Apps as a Democratizing Technology:  Challenges and Opportunities for Federal Agencies. This project will be conducted as part of the institute’s policy informatics portfolio with Kevin Desouza serving as the Principle Investigator.

Most US federal agencies have embraced President Obama’s vision for 1) greater transparency, 2) increased citizen participation, and 3) greater collaboration. A critical outcome of these initiatives is the willingness of federal agencies to engage with citizens around open-data initiatives and the creation of technology for solving public policy problems – ‘citizen apps.’ We are witnessing an increasing proliferation of ‘citizen apps,’ i.e. applications designed by citizens and developers to solve public policy challenges. Federal agencies are not only opening up data reservoirs, but are also incentivizing the development of citizen apps through competitions. In this research project, we propose to study citizen apps and the federal programs that fostered (incentivized) their creation.

There are many reasons why it is beneficial to involve citizens in the governance process. One, it opens up problem solving opportunities where citizens can participate. Second, it serves as a forum to increase the diversity of thought and knowledge brought to a problem. This increases the potential for innovation by engaging many minds to solve complex problems. Citizen participation leads to greater collective intelligence and hopefully more robust solutions for social issues. Third, it allows citizens to solve problems that a government agency might be challenged to address. Finally, it empowers the vision set forth by former President John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Citizen app programs normally come in two broad flavors. One set of citizen app programs are fueled by government open-data initiatives. In these cases, a government agency makes data available to the public and the public in turn responds by using this data creatively to generate technologies (the apps) that better the lives of citizens. The second set of citizen app programs is where a government agency issues a challenge or problem to the public. The public then responds by building solutions to the challenge. In this case, the government may incentivize the development of the apps through issue of recognition prizes and funding. This success of both types of citizen app programs depends on the dynamic collaboration of government agencies, app developers, and the citizenry. To date, our knowledge on what makes for successful collaboration among these three players is limited.

There are a number of design considerations that need to be addressed when building citizen app programs from the nature of incentives provided to goals of the apps, the motivations that drive citizens to create the apps, and how (and where) to deploy the apps, the involvement by the agency (e.g. staff time to interact with app developers), level and amount of data availability, and creation of problem-solving communities and forums, among others. In this research project, we will uncover design considerations that government executives need to bear in mind as they initiate citizen app programs. We will also compare and contrast citizen app programs to arrive at a set of best practices by looking at critical success factors that led to citizen app programs that were highly successful.

Our research project will thoroughly inventory and study the range of citizen apps to understand the typology of the apps, the data they use, the problems they address, the motivation of the designers, the usage by citizens, and the impact on government and governance. We propose to discover and define the inter-relations between the government agencies, the app developers, and the citizens. While our focus will be on studying citizen apps generated out of programs commissioned by the federal government, we will also look at programs started by progressive states (e.g. New York, California, etc).

The results of the final report will benefit public sector government executives, public managers, and the public-at-large in several ways: 1) it will enable government executives to avoid common pitfalls when incentivizing citizen app programs (for e.g. placing emphasis on the frontend, i.e. the creation of apps, and ignoring the more challenging aspect of ensuring that the apps are diffused into the agency’s work practices or to citizens); 2) it will enable public managers to understand the landscape of citizen apps, the motivations of citizens who create them, and the factors that drive their usage; and 3) it will enable federal agencies to better engage citizens into the policy setting process through supporting technology development thereby increasing the chances of more effective solution generation for policy problems.