FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Anthony Flint
617-661-3016 x116
Cambridge, Mass. (January 20, 2009) – The Lincoln Lecture series for spring 2009 has been set, with talks scheduled on property rights and titling, cities and climate change, and people- vs. placed-based community development initiatives.
The lectures are all at Lincoln House at 113 Brattle Street in Cambridge at 12 noon and lunch is served. They are free but registration is required.
In a related new feature, the Lincoln Institute is now making selected Lincoln Lectures available for viewing on video streaming on the Web site. The first such lecture is available at the lectures page, featuring former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, in a discussion of prospects for a national rail system comparable to Europe or Asia under the new Obama administration. Dukakis was a vice chairman of the board of Amtrak and has been an advisor on transportation in the transition.
The Spring 2009 Lincoln Lecture series includes:
- Property Rights, Titling, and Regulation: An International Perspective, February 20, 2009, a talk by Benito Arruñada, professor of business organization at Pompeu Fabra University. This resentation will analyze different approaches to conveying, recording, and insuring title to real property. The benefits and costs of different titling systems will be examined, with special attention to problems of regulation. Empirical issues, and data comparing alternate international systems, will also be presented. Arruñada has done research at the intersection of organization, law and economics, and has published scientific articles on management, law, and economics. His main current interests are the behavioral and institutional bases for impersonal exchange—from innate behavioral biases and the structure of moral systems, to contractual enforcement, the commoditization of property rights and business formalization.
- Cities and Climate Change: Regional Integration, March 18, 2009, a talk by Heather Tremain, the 2008-2009 Lincoln-Loeb Fellow. The presentation will examine the role of of cities in climate change mitigation, energy use associated with buildings and transportation and greenhouse gas emissions, and the critical factor of density. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions are contingent on the coordination of planning at a regional level that makes possible transportation options that reduces vehicular related-emissions, Tremain says. Two key questions arise: What are density patterns that are less intensive in carbon emissions? And what mechanisms and approaches can facilitate, and provide incentives for, integrated approaches to density and transportation? This talk will draw lessons and examples from leading North American cities and regions. Tremain, a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, is co-founder of reSource Rethinking Building, a Vancouver-based green building consulting and development company. Her initiatives include Vancouver’s first green market housing project, the creation of Canada’s first green building guidelines for a new community (UniverCity), and the development of environmental strategies for the Southeast False Creek area, the home of Vancouver’s Olympic Village. In addition to her development work she has been actively engaged with municipalities in British Columbia on sustainability initiatives.
- Place-Based versus People-Based Community Economic Development, April 22, 2009, a talk by Randall Crane, professor and vice chair of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a former visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute. The presentation will analyze urban development policies aimed at assisting low wage labor markets that are often characterized as either supply-side or “people-based,” where directed toward individuals, or demand-side or “place-based,” where eligibility is conditioned on location. While extremely popular among local politicians and community activists — especially for areas of concentrated poverty — place-based programs have been the subject of extensive policy critiques. Policies tied to geography are crudely targeted, leading to both leakage and incomplete coverage, and they can induce strong spatial distortions due to incentive problems. However, location contains information helpful in identifying intended recipients, and the visibility of resources is also often attached to a particular place, a key measure of political support. Bundling aid with location has both benefits and costs. Both strategies thus face targeting and effectiveness challenges. Rather than strictly a matter of which generally dominates, the more common policy choice is one of negotiating the tradeoffs. Crane studies the housing, transportation and economic development challenges of cities, such as rushed urbanization, urban design/behavior linkages, urban environmental problems, public finances, housing and transportation demographics and the measure, meaning and governance of sprawl.
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