As the 39th mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, Brett Smiley is addressing public safety, affordable housing, education, and climate resilience. Before being elected mayor in 2022, Smiley—who was born and raised in the Chicago area and moved to Rhode Island to work in politics in 2006—was head of the state Department of Administration, chief operating officer of Providence, and chief of staff for former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo.

With a population of about 191,000, Providence is the third-largest city in New England after Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts. Once home to extensive manufacturing and mills, the city in recent years became known for embracing New Urbanism, historic preservation, and adaptive reuse, and for culinary, cultural, and arts innovations. The Congress for the New Urbanism is returning to Providence in the summer of 2025 for its annual summit.

Smiley sat for an interview with senior fellow Anthony Flint this spring at City Hall. Their conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is available as a Land Matters podcast.

Anthony Flint: The narrative arc of Providence over the last 30 years has been remarkable: a second city brought out of economic doldrums by dismantling highways and daylighting rivers and paying attention to urban design. Now there are concerns about affordability, beginning with housing. Where does the city go from here?

Brett Smiley: I appreciate you mentioning the remarkable progress that the city has made. We’ve come a long way, and while many postindustrial cities continue to struggle, Providence is on an entirely different trajectory. Through the pandemic, we had an influx of people wanting urban amenities, wanting arts and culture and diversity and walkability, but with a little bit less work than it is to live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, certainly less expensive than living in those places or in Boston.

One of our competitive points is that we were less expensive. But we’ve not kept pace with building, and as a result, housing prices are skyrocketing. We are on the top five list of net inflow migration, but 50 out of 50 for new housing starts. Our task is to make it easier to build more densely, and to do so in the context of the world in which we find ourselves, so that means incorporating green infrastructure, preparing for climate change, while also allowing for more growth.

We think we can actually lead the way in doing both. It’s an exciting time in the city. We don’t have a hard time selling Providence. What we have a hard time doing is making sure that there’s a home available for everyone who wants one.

AF: You’ve got different places where you can build infill, including surface parking lots. You’ve got some places that don’t require tearing anything down.

BS: We have plenty of places to build. One of our economic challenges has always been that we are in, from a cost perspective, the same economic market as Boston, and yet our rents or sales prices are significantly discounted to Boston. We’ve got a gap to fill there in terms of the price that the housing unit can command and the cost it takes to construct it, which is why we’re working so hard on allowances for things like bonuses for density and the relaxation of parking minimums, ways to try to allow developers to help projects become financially viable; while also looking at some more innovative solutions that cities around the countries are trying, such as changes to the fire code and other ways that actually will reduce the cost of construction by relaxing some of the regulatory requirements.

AF: Unlike the mayors of Boston or Paris, you’ve been a little less enthusiastic about the complete streets concept of pedestrian, bike, and bus lanes. How has your thinking evolved?

BS: I remain convinced that pedestrian safety is of critical importance. We know that one of the reasons that people like living in Providence and want to move to Providence is because of its walkability, and pedestrian safety is super important to me and to the city. We’ve also been working closely with the AARP. Pedestrian safety is really important to older residents. I’m convinced that Providence is a great city to retire to.

The dilemma that I see is that the discussion around bicycle lanes and those who commute by bicycle seems to consume a disproportionate share of the conversation. We know that only two to four percent of the population commutes by bike. We have aspirations of doubling or quadrupling that number. It’s still going to be less than 10 percent of people commuting by bike. We do want to see more people choosing that as an alternate means of transportation. When we’re talking about five percent of the commuting public, sometimes it feels like 75 percent of the conversation.

That’s the shift that I’ve been sensitive to, and I try to devote time and resources to the means and methods of transportation that most people actually use, which is not, in fact, biking. We’re in the Northeast. We have real winters. It’s a city of seven hills, famously in its history, and it doesn’t work for everyone to be able to commute by bike year-round. Most of those folks still have a car. I just try to be realistic about how much time and energy and resources we put into a slice of the commuting public that represents a relatively small minority.

AF: Can you reflect on the challenge of retaining major employers, like the toy manufacturer Hasbro, and the practice of offering things like tax breaks for economic development?

BS: The tactics for economic development have changed in my career in public service. At first, when I was working in government, people were trying to woo headquarters based upon incentives. Then corporate leaders were making decisions, and then the conversation shifted where it became all about talent. Headquarters were choosing where to go based upon where the talent was, maybe less so based upon the financial incentives. Then the pandemic changed it a third time, where with the increase of remote or hybrid work, people are starting to work anywhere and everywhere.

The really meaningful growth that we’ve seen over the last decade, and particularly since the pandemic, are people moving here with good jobs in hand that are located somewhere else or nowhere at all. They’re moving here with good jobs, and it doesn’t matter where their job is. The way in which we think about economic development has shifted. The way I think about economic development has shifted, which is one of the reasons that housing is so primary in my priorities because housing is, in fact, an economic development strategy.

When people can choose where they live and their job is not dependent on that location, you have to give them a high quality of life and an affordable home, and so that’s what we’re working on. Nevertheless, there is still a role for major site-based employers. In terms of municipalities’ reputation, companies that people know can be very important to your identity and to your city’s economic prospects and its brand, if you will, and Hasbro is one of those. It’s got a century-long history in Rhode Island. It’s currently headquartered in neighboring Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The CEO there has said that that site is no longer working for them, and we found ourselves in a competition with Boston. To date, they’ve not made a decision, but we put forward a very compelling package and proposal, and I hope that they choose Providence. Part of our pitch, in addition to being competitive on an economic package, is again, back to this quality of life and livability. It’s really easy for me to convince the executive suite at Hasbro that mid-career professionals and young workers want to be here, that this is the kind of city that has a youthful vibrancy that other cities have, but it’s a place that they can actually afford to be.

We made a compelling economic package, and we would do that for other major employers as well to choose Providence. I will say, despite the comments about the importance of embracing the hybrid and remote workers, the other thing about having a corporate headquarters that really does matter is it impacts the investments that that company makes in the community, its philanthropy, and its volunteer time. Whereas hybrid or remote workers are often not doing the same level of investment in a community as a headquarters does.

There’s real value in making sure that there is a core corporate community that helps support and sustain our civic institutions, our artistic organizations, and other groups that rely on that corporate philanthropic support that seems to be most generous in the headquarters city as opposed to a regional office or a place in which they just happen to have hybrid or remote workers.

AF: A recent study found that Providence nightlife generates nearly a billion dollars a year in economic activity, but pointed out that many workers can’t catch a bus to go home after the bars and restaurants close. What can Providence, lacking a light rail or subway, do to improve transit?

BS: It’s important that we refer to it as life at night, because it’s not just nightlife. There are thousands of employees that work during what we refer to as “the other nine to five”: 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. That’s restaurants and hospitality and nightclubs, but also someone working the overnight shift at a hospital and other jobs like that.

We don’t have a subway or light rail system here in Providence or anywhere in Rhode Island. We have a bus system that works reasonably well during the day but is less frequent—and in the case of some lines, shuts down—late at night. The solutions are to look at other means of transportation like ridesharing and micromobility, and with our bus system, RIPTA, to provide better service to these major employment centers. We don’t need brand-new innovations. We just need to think about the delivery of services for this other period of time that often gets overlooked and forgotten.

I talk about arts and culture, but nightlife is a big part of it too. This is a fun city, and I think the most thriving nightlife in New England to be sure, with some pretty impressive statistics. On a per capita basis, Providence has more nightclubs than New York City. In terms of percentage of our population, we’re a more diverse city than Los Angeles. There’s something for everyone here and we know for a fact that people come down 95 to go out in Providence from the much bigger neighbor to our north, Boston.

Our reputation as a place of theater, live music, a growing comedy scene, a really vibrant Spanish language club scene, there is really something for everyone here and we want to make sure that not only do people have a safe, fun time, but that that really important contributing part of our economy continues to thrive.

AF: Given the experience of a major bridge having to be closed because of structural integrity issues, what is your vision for investing in infrastructure, particularly now that cities might be looking at a different framework from the federal government?

BS: Part of the story of the Washington Bridge on I-95, which is a major artery here in the city—it’s a state-owned bridge and a Rhode Island DOT-funded project—was inadequate maintenance. The lesson I draw from that is the importance of ongoing maintenance to avoid the much bigger price tag that comes for replacement.

We need to make sure that we’re all taking care of this infrastructure, particularly after four years of significant investment in some real big infrastructure projects here at home and all around the country. Secondly, we need predictable revenue to be able to pay for these projects [such as user fee tolls on heavy trucks]. You can repair it today or replace it tomorrow, and the replacement is always the worse investment.

AF: Similarly, are you worried about the health of the “eds and meds” anchor institutions, which continue to be a critical component of the Providence renaissance, amid the disruptions in federal funding?

BS: I’m very worried about the financial stability of the eds and meds. The change of the indirect cost recovery for NIH grants is affecting Providence already. Both our hospitals and our primary research institution, which is Brown University, depend on those funds. To change the rules of the road midstream is hugely disruptive.

Our largest employers are the hospital and the colleges. It will find its way into our community one way or another with these cuts, whether it’s job losses, depressed real estate values, diminished investment. And all of the good things that might not come as a result of this—the cures to diseases that may not be discovered and solutions to real problems none of us get to benefit from, if the research never happens. It’s a real problem and a real shame. It’s no way to treat really critical partners.

AF: You’re a different kind of politician compared to some past leaders in Rhode Island who might be described as more old-school. How would you rate yourself in terms of engaging with constituents? In a recent interview, you said, “There are times when public leaders need to say, pencils down, we’ve heard enough. This is what we’re doing.”

BS: I think about things in two ways. One is around priorities, and the other is around style. With respect to priorities, I didn’t know him, but the late Boston Mayor Tom Menino talked about being an urban mechanic, [and that] has always been a phrase that resonated with me. I’ve tried to set my priorities on core quality of life issues, things that impact people’s daily lives, and try to make them better. Just try to fix the problems that people actually care about.

I think there’s going to be a huge erosion in trust in government in general. The antidote to that is to show competence and efficiency and effectiveness, particularly at the local level, because our residents know us by name. They’re not shy to tell us what they think isn’t working well. I try to stay focused on those things and not on solving all the world’s problems, but solving a neighborhood’s problems.

In terms of style, I’m a pretty low-key person, and I don’t have high highs, I’m not bombastic, I try to listen to people. We do a lot of community engagement. We’ve tried to do community engagement in some new ways [like Zoom and online surveys]. There does come a moment where the leader just needs to make a decision and move on. That’s what I got elected to do. I’ll be on the ballot again next year. If the voters of Providence don’t like it, they can pick someone else.

I feel like it’s my job to say, “Okay, we’ve heard everyone’s feedback. We’ve made modifications where we think it makes sense. We can agree to disagree on other things. This is what we’re doing moving forward and the day of accountability is election day.” I’m entirely comfortable with that. I think that’s what it takes to get things done. That’s what I think our residents actually want us to do, is to get things done. Inaction is the enemy of progress. It’s something I don’t want to fall victim to.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Mayor Brett Smiley. Credit: City of Providence.

In the Carondelet neighborhood of St. Louis, where once-busy shipyards gave way to vacancy and blight during the waning decades of the 20th century, a global specialty minerals company is building a $400 million factory to produce highly efficient batteries for energy storage. 

Another new factory is rising up amid the shuttered steel mills and closed coal mines of Weirton, West Virginia, built by a different manufacturer whose battery technology involves mixing iron particles and air.  

And in Schenectady, New York—where the production of electric lights, appliances, and engines by Thomas Edison’s General Electric company spurred an economic boom that began in the late 1800s and had faded away by the mid-1900s—the first of a class of super-tall, highly efficient onshore wind turbines recently rolled out from a pristine assembly line at a new GE plant. 

“It’s a win-win for the environment and the local workforce,” beamed New York State Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara in a TikTok video recorded outside the plant, which will ultimately employ 200 people including skilled union labor. The end result, he said, will be “a more affordable, reliable, sustainable, and secure energy future.” 

All of these projects and dozens more across the country are manifestations of a new federal, place-based industrial policy, fueled by more than $1 trillion in tax credits and grants under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science Act, and most of all, what is essentially sweeping climate action legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Facing the urgent need for manufacturing the components of the clean energy transition—electric vehicles, batteries and energy storage, equipment for charging stations, wind turbines, solar panels, and many other components of the transition from fossil fuels, like high-capacity carbon-fiber power lines to bolster the nation’s overburdened power grid—the Biden administration has made several strategic decisions. 

First, the White House declared that the United States should not cede all this advanced industry to China, currently the world’s leader in producing wind and solar equipment and inexpensive electric vehicles. And if these items are to be made in America, administration officials say, it should happen in postindustrial legacy cities and distressed counties—the “places where opportunity has left,” as White House climate czar Ali Zaidi said at a Columbia University conference last fall. 

Since President Biden took office, companies have announced more than $250 billion in private investments, an unprecedented amount, to manufacture “the nuts and bolts of clean energy,” said Ben Beachy, special assistant to the President for Climate Policy, Industrial Sector, and Community Investment. “The administration is committed to ensuring that hard-hit communities and workers reap the rewards of this boom, including deindustrialized communities.” 

Leaders in legacy cities, which have been struggling with manufacturing and population loss for decades, say they welcome the boost. Many perceive something poetic about the heavily polluting manufacturing processes of a century ago being replaced with industry that both functions sustainably and produces equipment that will help reduce fossil fuel emissions. The pivot, as much cultural as having to do with economic development, is already leading some to rechristen the Midwest and Southeast the “Battery Belt.” 

“Cities like ours were built on energy innovation, but it extracted a price,” said Paige Cognetti, mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, a city known since the turn of the 20th century for its sooty coal and electricity industries. Cognetti cites Biden’s childhood roots in the working-class city as a factor in the initiative to help legacy cities engage in the clean energy transition. “I think he understands that it takes major investment to set up regions for economic success and climate resilience.”  

Many questions remain about implementation, however, including whether economically distressed regions can conjure the necessary ecosystem to support the new industry—first and foremost a trained workforce, but also other elements such as infrastructure, housing, and vibrant civic and higher education institutions to provide not only training but also research and development. 

In addition, the massive amount of federal investment flowing from Washington will require a keen administrative capacity at the state and local level to discover the opportunities, manage transactions, and comply with rules and regulations. 

Finally, land use issues are expected to complicate the effort. The amount of space needed by many of the private companies—for building electric vehicles, in particular—is such that the best sites are at the periphery of cities, requiring greenfield development, rather than in the urban core. Urban infill redevelopment is possible, but there are significantly higher costs associated with adaptive reuse or brownfield regeneration.  

The challenges are very real, but so is the opportunity. While federal spending from the IRA could be disrupted if there is a change in administrations, repeal would require Congressional action.  In the meantime, billions of dollars in federal funding have begun to flow from the first investments of that law. Local, regional, and state governments and their partners should be ready with thoughtful and actionable plans for implementation, said Peter Colohan, director of Federal Strategies at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

“The money and incentives flowing out of the government at a rapid pace are making private investment irresistible—in clean energy, nature-based climate solutions, and advanced manufacturing,” he said. Issues of land use and equity will surface regularly, he added, requiring state and local governments, philanthropies, and nonprofit organizations to help “create virtuous circles of community investment, and avoid unintended harms.”

* * * 

The history of subsidy in American manufacturing has some twists and turns, but ultimately government support in one form or another has supported industry for over two centuries. From the first flour mills in the late 18th century to the advent of the automotive assembly line, manufacturing in the United States fulfilled a market need for goods and supplies that was driven largely by individual entrepreneurship, though generally welcomed with open arms by local officials happy to make sure land transactions, for example, went smoothly to establish factories and nearby worker housing. 

During that early era of industrial growth, government also stepped in to provide the infrastructure to support commerce, from a national rail network to ports and canals. Factories were generally located well within city limits, their access to waterways and rail lines making it relatively easy to get the goods to market, both domestic and overseas. The physical imprint of this growth on America’s cities was transformational, with blocks-long multi-story structures built to employ 10,000 workers or more, and an adjacent density of housing and amenities. 

World War II turned the nation’s industrial might toward building tanks and planes for the military, and began a tradition of decentralized defense spending, with contractors establishing themselves in Congressional districts that made sure the pipeline of Pentagon funds kept flowing. The Interstate Highway Act of 1959 was another important source of federal investment for cities, powered by the argument that new freeway infrastructure was needed for the swift movement of goods.  

As the economies of Japan and Europe came back online in the decades after the war, manufacturing in Rust Belt cities gradually petered out. From the 1950s through the 1970s, private companies increasingly took advantage of cheaper labor overseas, and technological automation in production and distribution thinned the payroll even more. Thus began the decline of once prosperous cities across a swath from the Mississippi River to the Northeast, from St. Louis to Cleveland, Allentown to Hartford. 

The spate of factory closings through the 1970s was devastating, said Alan Mallach, coauthor of “Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities,” a report published by the Lincoln Institute. “Start with the proposition that in the 1950s and early 1960s, as many as half of all the jobs in cities like Cleveland or Youngstown were in manufacturing, and then factor in that most of the retail and service jobs were supported by the wages factory workers were making, you have to figure that 70 to 80 percent of the local economies in these cities was based on their manufacturing sector. So ‘doomed’ may be a bit strong, but it comes close.” 

Add in the phenomenon of white flight, which saw white residents move en masse from downtown areas to suburbs, and what is remarkable is that legacy cities survived in any form at all, Mallach said. With both the physical urban environment and the social and economic fabric changing dramatically, he says, “a lot of credit goes to the thousands of working-class and middle-class Black families who moved into the neighborhoods being vacated by white families and stabilized them for the next few decades.” 

Over the last half-century, certain types of manufacturing continued to be propped up on an ad hoc basis by the US government, in the form of selective tariffs—imposed on foreign competitors to benefit American-made steel, for example—or outright bailouts, as enjoyed by the automotive industry after the Great Recession. Tech companies including Amazon, meanwhile, have frequently been given red-carpet treatment involving significant tax breaks and other incentives as local leaders compete to have businesses set up shop in their city or town. 

Notably, it is the energy sector that has benefited from the longest and most robust history of subsidy, beginning with federal rewards for depleting oil wells in the 1920s and continuing with tax breaks and subsidies to this day—conservatively estimated to be $20 billion a year for producers of coal, natural gas, and crude oil. 

Now that fossil fuels are set to be replaced by renewables including wind, solar, and hydro, the White House is attempting to execute the equivalent of a three-cushion billiards shot: fight climate change by making the transition away from fossil fuels, make clean energy components and systems in America, and restore jobs in struggling places. 

“We will not achieve our climate goals without mobilizing trillions of dollars in support of climate action. Properly guided, that wave of investments can flow into good union jobs,” said Beachy, from the climate policy office. “Properly guided, it can flow into communities that have endured decades of divestment. Our climate strategy is a job strategy, it is an equity strategy. That’s the basic logic.” 

For an initiative that has been operating relatively under the radar, the place-based approach does appear to be off to a strong start. According to two federal government databases, at the Department of Energy and the White House’s Investing in America inventory, an estimated 700 clean energy projects are already online or in the works, across sectors including: 

• Batteries and materials. High-performance batteries are much in demand for increasingly popular EVs, including the Ford F-150. Power storage is a huge need in the clean energy grid, to extend and preserve energy provided by renewables. Driven by innovation, battery factories and critical minerals facilities are popping up in Michigan (Our Next Energy), Georgia (Anovion Tech, SK Battery), North Carolina (Albermarle Corp.), and  Mississippi, where a new truck battery joint venture will create more than 2,000 clean new jobs—more than any single investment has ever brought to the state.   

• Electric vehicles. Given the head start by the heavily subsidized EV makers in China, as well as a competitive position by the pioneering company Tesla, expanded production in the United States has been halting. Administration officials say there is growing demand, aided by the $7,500 tax credit individuals can claim upon purchase; since the passage of the IRA in 2022, there were a record 1.46 million passenger clean vehicle sales,  according to the Treasury Department. In addition to new EV plants, such as Rivian’s in Illinois, billions are available for retooling existing automaking facilities and encouraging the manufacture and deployment of the all-important network of charging stations, which are poised become as ubiquitous as gas stations. 

• Wind. Here again, China is the leading producer of wind turbines, with 60 percent of the world’s production capacity. But American companies, like GE Vernova in Schenectady, are making strides in developing more efficient and effective towers, blades, and associated infrastructure to better connect to the grid. Technological innovations are opening up new possibilities as well, such as less expensive bladeless turbines that capture prevailing winds or turn to harvest wind from different directions. 

• Solar. The world’s fastest-growing source of energy is another difficult challenge, as the cheapest solar panels continue to be made in China—and indeed, the seven major Chinese solar companies recently provided more power to the world than oil companies, according to Bloomberg. But a few standouts have been successful, especially poetic in places that used to produce coal or heavy manufacturing. In Farmington, New Mexico, a solar farm is being built near a decommissioned coal-fired power plant and mine. As with wind technology, solar is evolving rapidly; one company has developed sun-harvesting crystal spheres that would take up a fraction of the space now required for panels. 

• Other ancillary support. Several programs under the IRA are providing general support for new industry by improving roads, bridges, airports, and drinking water systems, with notable upgrades in the works in Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Allentown.  The White House is also intent on bolstering the supply chain of materials like aluminum, which is critical in solar panels, EVs, and power lines—and making sure that the production of those materials is less polluting. As an example, Century Aluminum is receiving funding from the Department of Energy for a $3.9 billion project to build a new, clean primary aluminum smelter in the Mississippi River Basin.   

It is difficult to overstate the unprecedented volume of federal support for these efforts. Keeping track of what funding is available and where it’s going has become a cottage industry. In part because the main instrument is the tax credit, the ultimate cost to the federal budget  depends on the number of private companies that collaborate with local regions on projects (as well as individual households that take advantage of rebates for EVs, energy efficiency, and climate-friendly systems such as hot and cold weather heat pumps). 

The baseline figure provided by the Biden administration was that the IRA, a multi-year program, would provide at least $370 billion for the clean energy transition, in spending and tax credits. Brookings estimates that $780 billion could be coursing through the US economy by 2031, while Goldman Sachs calculates the total potential amount at $1.2 trillion. 

“It is an extraordinary policy moment,” said Mark Muro, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who coauthored a report listing some 70 distressed counties that have received some kind of investment already. “This is a new, modern, distinctly American industrial strategy, rebalancing the economy. This will bring hope and genuine economic activity to places that have been without that for years.” 

Supporters point to dozens of ribbon-cuttings for plant openings that have already occurred—part of what they compare to manufacturers coming forward for the war effort 80-plus years ago, as a kind of patriotic national mobilization symbolized by Rosie the Riveter flexing her bicep and proclaiming, “We can do it.”  

Where the Funding Is Coming From 

On paper, the Biden administration has made available more than $3.6 trillion in federal funding for infrastructure, manufacturing, and community resilience since 2021, including hundreds of billions to support the transition away from fossil fuels. At present, only a fraction of the multi-year spending plans has actually been distributed. 

Inflation Reduction Act (IRA): The chief feature of this nearly $500 billion law signed by President Biden in 2022, in addition to inflation-curbing measures such as reducing the federal budget deficit and lowering prescription drug prices, is the unprecedented investment in clean energy to combat climate change. A multi-year spending plan based largely on tax credits, the IRA could have a total cost of $1 trillion, according to some estimates.  

CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS): Also signed into law in 2022, the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act is intended to bring microchip manufacturing back to the United States after decades of semiconductors being made overseas, primarily in China. About $60 billion is being directed to strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development for high-tech industry including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. 

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law): This law authorizes $1.2 trillion in spending that includes about $550 billion in funding for America’s roads and bridges, water infrastructure, resilience, Internet, and more. The White House describes the legislation, signed into law in 2021, as a boost to U.S. competitiveness that will create jobs and “make our economy more sustainable, resilient, and just.” 

American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA): The $1.9 trillion stimulus package, passed by Congress and signed by President Biden, included $30.5 billion in federal funding to support the nation’s public transportation systems and other capital investments. The legislation was largely a response to the economic disruption caused by the Covid pandemic. 

***

Although the federal largesse is welcome, some wonder if a single factory can really make a dent in the problems of deep-seated poverty, underperforming schools, vacant properties, and persistent crime that have metastasized over decades in legacy cities. 

“Reindustrialization around clean energy and technology is a good thing as far as it goes, but I don’t think it goes anywhere as far as its boosters seem to believe,” said Mallach. 

There is much baggage to overcome. Revival in places like Cleveland or St. Louis has been uneven. Some smaller legacy cities have struggled in part due to a lack of robust civic institutions and “eds and meds,” the nonprofit anchor institutions providing employment and innovation. 

The traditional manufacturing city was sustained by a kind of factory that hardly exists any more— facilities with large footprints and employing 10,000 people or more. That configuration is not easily replaced, Mallach said. New manufacturing is much less labor intensive.  

As an example, he cited a new steel mill in Youngstown, Vallourec Star, which replaced a prior facility. “It probably produces more than the old mill did, but it does it with 700 to 800 workers, not 10,000 to 15,000. And most of those workers sit at consoles operating machinery and robots, which, of course, means that they need a respectable level of computer literacy.

“Now, 700 jobs matter, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what’s been lost,” Mallach said. 

Others have concerns at a higher policy level, expressing doubt about the government’s ability to pick winners and losers in private markets, and recalling the failure of the solar company Solyndra during the Obama administration. Some start-ups don’t pan out. Coal miners may not transition to being electricians at a wind turbine factory. Already the EV maker Rivian had to pause construction of a 13 million-square-foot plant in Georgia because of financial losses as the company tries to ramp up production. 

“My thinking is that there should be a pretty high bar to clear to justify” government support for private industry, said Colin Grabow, associate director at the Cato Institute. “If there’s some need that’s not being met by the market, government might intervene,” he said, or if there are national security issues at stake, as is the case with microprocessors. 

But Grabow questions the emerging industrial policy in practical terms as well, suggesting that the world should have access to the cheapest clean energy possible, whether made in America or not.  

“If the overriding goal says, ‘hey, we’re facing a planetary emergency, and we need to do this transition’ . . .  if the Chinese want to give us cheap EVs and solar cells and all the rest, then that should be welcomed. The economy and jobs should take a back seat to that,” he said. 

Still, supporters argue that if there was ever a time to boost the clean energy transition, it is now, with essentially the future of the planet at stake. Many bemoan a perceived pattern that the clean-energy sector is being unreasonably scrutinized and questioned, in light of the history of the government so willingly supporting other industries. 

Steering the factories to postindustrial regions is seen as an appropriate measure to address economic inequities, especially those places that were ultimately harmed by the environmental and health impacts of coal mining or heavily polluting industries. 

“Dealing with climate change offers a real chance to take on the inequality that plagues our country as well,” said Bill McKibben, a professor at Middlebury College and founder of the climate action organizations 350.org and Third Act. The Biden administration “has been putting factories in places based on real need.” 

So far, the federal funding to support made-in-America clean energy manufacturing is going to blue and red states alike—and indeed one analysis by Politico showed that most of the projects are in red states.  

“We want to be able to see energy—clean energy—produced in every pocket of the country. Blue states, red states, really it helps to save people money, so it’s all about green,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at a White Housing briefing last year when discussing how Republican districts were using the clean-energy investments. 

At least three major challenges remain if the implementation of the place-based industrial policy is to be successful, however. The first is the capacity of state and local governments to take advantage of all the funding and programs that have been very quickly made available. 

States and municipalities are scrambling to apply for dozens of new programs to leverage the tax credits and rebates, which requires extensive knowledge of grant-writing and compliance rules. The administration has tried to make the process as user friendly as possible, and established “direct pay,” which extends eligibility for funds to nonprofits and municipalities for the first time. “You qualify, you get a check,” senior White House adviser John Podesta told state and local officials at the US Conference of Mayors winter meeting in January in Washington, DC. “We hope you will be evangelists” in spreading the word, he added. 

Despite the effort, six out of ten mayors said in a survey by the Boston University Initiative on Cities that bureaucratic complexities were weighing down the process, citing a “challenging grant application process and the public’s lack of familiarity with its details.” 

Some states like Illinois and Nevada have set up offices to make sure federal funding is efficiently and effectively used. Massachusetts recently also did something similar, to help distressed communities become aware of the federal funding opportunities that can help nurture the interest of private investment. Randall Woodfin, the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, established a “command center” to keep track of applications and deadlines. 

Another, more complicated hurdle is the need to support the new factories with an ecosystem of workforce training, child care, and the all-important engagement of nonprofit, civic, and higher education institutions. And that, in turn, will guide the land use decisions that will unlock economic activity in an equitable manner, said Bruce J. Katz, director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University. 

“This is a remarkable transition. It’s phenomenal. But location matters,” said Katz, who is also cofounder of New Localism Advisors, which seeks to help cities design, finance, and deliver transformative initiatives that promote inclusive and sustainable growth. “The devil is in the details as to where the large plants are located, and all these pieces of the puzzle that need to come together, whether it’s supply chain, spillover effects, or workforce readiness.” 

The country “tends to have an invest-first, plan-later perspective on the world,” he said, leading to a highly decentralized system. “We turn on the faucet and corporate investment is right there ready. Well, the cities need to have the sites ready.”

In addition to determining suitable locations, adds Amy Cotter, director of Climate Strategies at the Lincoln institute, “cities are going to need to be really intentional about planning for new industry in concert with resilience and inclusion.” Thoughtful urban planning, she notes, “can give rise to clean industry in a supportive ecosystem that enhances equitable prosperity for longstanding and new residents alike.” 

Several state and local governments are setting a foundation for this boom. In Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro established a $500 million initiative to make sure commercial and industrial sites are ready for development. West Virginia Northern Community College promised to set up courses and internships to prepare students for jobs at Boston Metal, a maker of clean-power alloys. 

Technological advances will help. Artificial intelligence can turbo-charge a range of higher education institutions, large or small, to provide research and development support to burgeoning clean energy industries. “There’s no question universities and research ecosystems can support and inform clean energy manufacturing, and AI can be a huge factor in discovery and innovation and scaling,” said John Werner, chief innovation officer at MIT Connection Science, a cross-disciplinary program facilitating networks of entrepreneurs. 

Muro, from Brookings, said workforce development and training is key to securing employees who may not have a college degree, who seek fulfilling and rewarding livelihoods that are a step up from the burdensome grind of the fossil fuel era. “It’s not your grandfather’s factory work,” he says.  

Nothing about it will be particularly easy. Trying to grow a supportive ecosystem “is not for the faint-hearted,” Muro said. “Resources, transportation, wrap-around services, support for midnight shifts, childcare . . . There’s a lot to wrestle with in this transition.

Still, he says, the moment is unprecedented, and it holds real promise: “Some legacy cities will do a great job and some will struggle, but at least they will be in the mix and will have this opportunity.” 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

Urban economist Néstor Garza first partnered with the Lincoln Institute’s program on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) over 20 years ago—to publish a working paper based on his undergraduate thesis, looking at the spatial distribution of land values in Bogotá, Colombia. Garza’s early career coincided with the city’s increased use of land value capture tools—policies that empower communities to recover and reinvest a portion of property value increases that result from public investment or government action—which allowed him to both study and experience their impact on the built environment. In 2005, Garza received a LAC Graduate Student Fellowship while pursuing his master’s degree in Colombia; he later earned a PhD in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge.

Today, Garza teaches economics at California State University, Dominguez Hills. In this conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Garza explains what Los Angeles could learn from his former hometown, why the concept of land value capture is sometimes misunderstood, and why he was excited to prove a 19th-century political economist correct.

JON GOREY: What is the main focus of your research, and how did your Lincoln Institute fellowship help you build upon that work?

NÉSTOR GARZA: My research has always been about urban economics, and more precisely, on the spatial analysis of land markets, regulation, and taxation. For example, I wrote a series of four papers on the neutrality of the land value development tax in Bogotá. This is neutrality in the sense described by Henry George, in that you’re able to extract part of that land value without changing anything else; I was able to prove both static and dynamic neutrality in Bogotá.

In 2005, I was doing my master’s in economics at Universidad Nacional, and I participated in the LAC fellowship. It was about the spatial distribution of housing markets and the creation of a value index for newly built housing in Bogotá. That one was super special: they flew us to an event in Quito, Ecuador, with Lincoln Institute faculty and with the other thesis fellows, and it was super interesting, I learned a lot. And more importantly, I started exchanging with all these colleagues in Latin America that are also interested in these types of things. It was really valuable for me. Then in 2008, Lincoln invited us to stay for three months in Bogotá, a group of Latin American students from maybe 10 different countries, to intensively learn about land markets, land policy, land law, geographic information systems, valuation, and so on. Once again, it was extremely rewarding.

JG: What are you working on now, and what are you hoping to work on next?

NG: One thing I’m working on is in-kind development contributions in Seattle. We all know the West Coast is suffering from a lack of housing—at this point it’s a humanitarian crisis, no?—and part of that is definitely related to the operation of land markets. So I have continued studying in-kind development contributions, specifically sidewalks in Seattle, and the effect of that on the supply of housing.

In Latin America, I’m working with a colleague in Santiago, Chile, creating spatially accurate land value indexes, and with another colleague in Merida Yucatan, in Mexico, on the effects of globalization on the local real estate markets. Essentially, huge amounts of international money are flowing to this region, purchasing absentee-owner real estate which geographically encloses the city, limits its development potential, and increases land values.

And I’m working with a colleague in Colombia tracing the unfolding of neoliberalism there back in the 1980s and ’90s. There was a paradigm shift in the way policy is made toward neoliberal logics, so we analyzed, one by one, the key economists and policymakers who were behind those transformations, analyzed their professional, educational, and research careers, to understand the motivations behind the reforms of 1991.

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JG: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your research?

NG: To really be able to see and prove, empirically, the static and dynamic neutrality of land value capture, that surprised me. Because, sure, I expected to find that, but when you do find it? Okay! So Mr. George was right, it’s not crazy. The entire thing makes sense. So I would say that was surprising, but a nice surprise, that it works the way we thought it works. Static neutrality means that applying a land value capture fee where there’s a reason for it—for example, new zoning rules, or a new park—decreases land values or decelerates land value increases while leaving everything else constant; it doesn’t discourage new development or change built environment prices in that area. Dynamic neutrality means that the enactment of the land value capture fee does not cause preemption, where developers rush to build, increasing land values, nor does it shift development or home value increases to a different part of the city that doesn’t have the land-based fee.

JG: What’s one thing you wish more people understood about Latin American land policy, or about urban economics more broadly?

NG: There are two things. One is what I wish that the Latin American policymakers and public would understand, and another is what I wish the rest of the world would perceive, particularly the place where I live, the metro area of Los Angeles.

In Latin America, thanks to the Lincoln Institute, I have traveled around the continent, making presentations, talking to people. Some people are really engaged and want to participate and activate all these economic tools for land management. But some people are super resistant, and the resistance comes from a kind of preconception, where in Spanish “land value capture” is translated as la captura de plusvalías. And plusvalías, in Spanish, is the same as the Marxist term “value added,” which has a kind of socialist connotation. People think that this is some kind of socialist conspiracy against private property and markets. This preconception is very difficult to change, to tell them, ‘No, it’s not, it’s actually the opposite. These are tools to enhance the construction industry, to enhance a very active real estate market’—because that’s what we want to march towards, an active market able to provide more housing for everybody.

Now on the other hand, I would like other places, particularly Los Angeles, to see how well Latin American cities use the tools they have to make positive changes in the built environment. It’s an environment of precariousness, poverty, lack of funding—but still, things get made, city blocks get transformed. Here in LA, we have Proposition 13 that completely undermines property taxes, and it’s the exact opposite. We have one of the largest financial bonds markets in the world, with large and extremely sophisticated developers, but we are unable to, for example, redevelop one block, we are unable to increase densities to what’s required to make this region sustainable. It’s so, so difficult here to do anything, as if all of those policy tools did not exist. In Latin America, regardless of the poverty and the problems, it’s not that it’s easy, but it’s being done, it’s happening. So I would like the rest of the world, the US and particularly the state of California, to notice that lots of positive transformations to the urban built environment can be made in the context of market institutions. We can change cities and make them a bit more livable, a bit less hostile to pedestrians or to the inhabitants.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

NG: For the last few years, what has kept me awake at night, but at the same time given me hope, is higher education, here in the United States and around the world.

On the one hand, I notice a kind of obsession with the specialization of higher education, an obsession with practical skills in everything we do. I feel it from students, from administrators, and from higher level education experts, where everything has to be immediately applicable, and abstract or higher reasoning skills are set aside as unimportant, because they’re not immediately marketable skills to be used in the labor market. But those higher-level abstract reasoning skills are the ones all of us use all the time in the labor force.

At the same time, the higher education system is what gives me hope. In Colombia, back in the ’90s, I attended public school—it was one school for millions of possible students, so the rate of rejection was like 99 percent, everybody was rejected using purely standardized exams. Then once you got in, they failed about 50 percent of the students. It was a cruel elimination process that I somehow survived. But that’s not what higher education should be about—it’s not about eliminating people, it should be about widening possibilities for everybody. Of course, you have to have some degree of rigor, some real seriousness with it. But it doesn’t help to just eliminate people, that doesn’t help society. And I have noticed that in my own country, and everywhere in the world, higher education has moved towards a more accepting, less regimented, less boring way of doing things. And that gives me hope.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read or show you’ve streamed lately?

NG: About three or four years ago, I read a book—the title is actually quite aggressive—called Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by anthropologist David Graeber. And it caught my attention because, in a very funny way, it touches on the nonsense that the neoliberal organization of society is bringing on us, the kind of obsession with working. Why? The truth is, the modern capitalist system is able to deliver for everybody by doing almost nothing, it’s so immensely wealthy. But we have ingrained in our heads that we need to have a job to justify our very existence, and that’s produced a kind of collective paranoia where we need to do something and justify doing it, because our lives depend on it. And it creates these masses of disenfranchised workers in a middle state, where it isn’t clear if they’re productive or not, and people suffer psychologically because of that. So the book, in a funny way, takes all of that, and actually touches on important elements of ethics and economics and philosophy, with some funny commentary and interesting anecdotes.

Jon Gorey is staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Néstor Garza. Credit: Courtesy photo.