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.

How did the technology requirements of the Clean Water Act affect municipal finances? Chicago native Rhiannon Jerch investigated this question for her dissertation at Cornell University, and was awarded a C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship in 2017 to support that research. The fellowship, named for a former Lincoln Institute of Land Policy board member and Columbia University economics professor, assists PhD students whose research complements the Institute’s work in land and tax policy.

An environmental and urban economist, Jerch would go on to teach first at Temple University, and then at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is now an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.

In this conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Jerch discusses the connections between infrastructure and urban growth, shares a common misconception about economists, and reveals a relatively low-cost way for cities to boost transit ridership.

JON GOREY: What is the general focus of your research?

RHIANNON JERCH: I’m primarily interested in infrastructure and how it affects urban growth—that’s the thread that connects my different lines of research. Infrastructure is one of these interesting concepts, because it’s really crucial to how cities develop and function, but it’s a public good, so it’s susceptible to all kinds of free riding and under investment. I’m very curious about how policies that help promote or improve infrastructure affect how cities grow.

JG: Can you talk about your research into the Clean Water Act and municipal finances?

RJ: Writing that paper, which has been conditionally accepted at an environmental journal, has been a very long process, and the Lincoln fellowship was really helpful in giving me the time and resources to really move it along.

One of the cornerstone pieces of the Clean Water Act regulation required a type of treatment technology in a wastewater treatment plant. So if you were a city with any kind of operating sewerage system, you were basically beholden to this regulation. A lot of communities had kind of rudimentary treatment processes, and the Clean Water Act came in and said, ‘No, you need to meet this minimum standard.’

The federal government gave some money for cities to comply with this, but not 100 percent of the cost. So I was curious to know, what did this policy do to city finances? Where did the money come from? And then, given that you have this kind of dual impact, where the city is now more expensive to live in, but it also has higher water quality, how do those things balance out? Do you see more people wanting to live in these now cleaner but more expensive places?

The effect was largest for smaller communities. There was kind of a net zero effect for larger cities … but you do see a lot of people wanting to move into these smaller cities after their water gets cleaner, compared to places where there is not a big improvement in the water quality.

JG: What are you researching now, or hoping to work on next?

RJ: The project that’s the most complete has to do with transportation, but we’re looking not necessarily at built infrastructure, but technological infrastructure. The paper looks at how the availability of real-time tracking in Google Maps changes how likely people are to take public transit. We track how ridership in transit systems changes before and after a given transit agency had their system’s real-time information integrated into Google Maps, and you see this pretty robust, significant increase. I think we have a 13 percent average increase, over three years, in transit ridership. That’s been a very fun paper to write. We’ve also found some evidence that it is, in fact, pulling people out of cars. We look at commuting modes, and we do see people are less likely to commute in a car and more likely to commute on public transit, which is pretty cool.

Another fun project that’s in its early phases came about from one of my undergraduates at Temple University. He’s from Stowe, Vermont, a ski resort town, and he had grown up hearing this anecdote that Stowe was this very successful tourism-focused town compared to the next town over—which was also mountainous, also beautiful, but not a tourist hotspot—because the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) had built the ski resort that you see in Stowe today.

So he had this idea: Do you see this in other parts of the country, where the CCC, for whatever reason, decided to invest a bunch of time, money, and effort into building out a recreation site in one particular area and not in another, and does that have long-term effects on the industry structure of that place, how many people live there, how wealthy it is? So we have information on recreation-focused CCC camps across the US, and we’re creating a century-long panel data set on county-level outcomes from the US Census.

Another project I’m working on that’s related to infrastructure has to do with blackouts and how it affects criminal activity. In the 1970s there was this major blackout in New York City, followed by three days of pandemonium. And blackouts are a lot more frequent now than they used to be; they’re about five times more frequent than they were 20 years ago, and most of that increase in frequency is driven by severe weather.

So we have this issue of increasingly severe weather, but infrastructure is not necessarily changing that much—in some cases, it’s becoming less and less resilient, it’s old—so we have more and more blackouts. We’re trying to understand, if a city experiences a blackout, how does that affect rates of crime? And how is that mediated by whether or not the blackout is caused by severe weather?

JG: What’s one thing you wish more people understood about economics?

RJ: Economists are not married to this idea that markets work great and prices are a perfect measure of value. I think environmental economists, in particular, spend most of their time thinking about ways in which that’s not true—in which markets don’t work, prices don’t reflect value—and trying to come up with other creative ways to really measure the value of things that cannot be transacted in a marketplace, like infrastructure or urban amenities.

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

RJ: I have two kids, so I am not staying up at night for anything. I need sleep! But when you look at the data on the age of US infrastructure, and the lack of investment in infrastructure, it’s pretty alarming. There’s a lot of evidence that infrastructure is extremely important. Roads are important. Airports are important. Railroads are very important. They connect people, they allow for job access, they allow for more productivity across cities, more idea exchange. There’s very little question about these things, but it is alarming how few public dollars are devoted to infrastructure projects.

In some ways, this project I’m doing on Google Maps is quite hopeful. It’s demonstrating that you don’t necessarily need to spend a ton of money building out new infrastructure. People are interested in taking public transit if they just have very good information on when, where, and how to access it. And that’s a fairly low-cost intervention to get people to engage in low-carbon behavior. I found that really reassuring.

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

RJ: I’ve been reading a book called Owning the Earth [by Andro Linklater]. It’s about the history of property ownership, globally, and its evolution. The continual question the author is asking himself is, ‘How do you weigh the economic benefits of very well defined property rights and a well functioning property market, versus the public good and public welfare constraints?’ Because in a lot of ways, they work in opposition.

And he goes into philosophy from some of the greats, like Locke and Hobbes, about these questions. So it’s been an interesting way to bring these fundamental topics you learn about—like Tiebout and property rights and all this stuff—to a more philosophical framework about what it really means to possess land from a cultural perspective. On a lighter note, I just finished reading my first Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None, and it was incredible. She’s such an amazing writer.

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

Lead image: University of Wisconsin Associate Professor Rhiannon Jerch. Credit: UW-Madison Agricultural and Applied Economics Faculty Profile via YouTube.

It doesn’t take much to understand the magnitude of the challenge that our Latin American cities are facing in terms of infrastructure financing and sustainable urban development. Despite significant investments in local development projects, the lack of funds for infrastructure financing is currently between 5 and 6.5 percent of the region’s GDP, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), that is, between $355 billion and $462 billion annually. Approximately 40 percent of this gap falls within the scope of subnational governments. In an increasingly challenging environment for local tax administration, how can subnational governments contribute to closing this gap? One solution lies in urban land value and use policies as levers for development financing, since the valuation of land generated by public action can be impressive—sometimes even greater than the cost of the infrastructure projects that lead to such increases in land value.

Consider, for example, the effect on real estate valuation that is expected to be produced by the construction of the Bogotá Metro: it’s estimated that homes located at a walkable distance from the planned stations will have an increase in value of up to 11 percent due to the accessibility benefits the project is expected to generate. The total valuation of private property generated by this investment could be used as leverage to finance, at least partially, the cost of the project.

To meet sustainable urban development objectives, it becomes increasingly important to exchange knowledge and experiences regarding the management of this type of public enterprise, planning, and related land use policies, as well as the various mechanisms for recovering capital gains that cities can consider as additional sources for their financing.

In this context, the Lincoln Institute course Urban Financing and Land Policies: A Review from the Colombian Experience was designed to analyze “the main concepts present in land policies through the review of land management and the application of financing instruments in Colombia,” according to María Mercedes Maldonado, one of the course coordinators. The selection of Colombia as the host country has to do with its long-time application of some of these instruments, such as betterment levies—a fiscal policy based on national legislation that celebrated its 100th anniversary of implementation in 2021—and the existence of legal frameworks that provide a basis for the implementation of these tools.

The Colombian experience allows us to evaluate progress, results, learning, and alternatives to contribute to the discussion on the use of these instruments in the context of Latin America, a region in which the Lincoln Institute has worked for over 30 years. The institute has built an extensive network of collaborators, both institutional and individual, who share a common view on the potential of land management as one of the solutions to the various challenges faced by cities in the region.

The Universidad de Los Andes is part of this valuable network, and for the second consecutive year the course was organized at the facilities of this institution in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies (CIDER, in Spanish) of the Faculty of Social Sciences. The course was led by Erik Vergel, associate professor at the School of Architecture and the CIDER, and specialist in transportation issues and land policies; and Maldonado, a lawyer and specialist in housing, urban financing, and land policies. This alliance, Vergel said, “is one of the most important for the Universidad de Los Andes in terms of internationalization processes, dissemination of new knowledge, and training urban matter specialists in the Latin American and Caribbean region.”

Besides Vergel and Maldonado, the group of professors also included María Cristina Rojas, architect and specialist in economics and urban development; Magda Montaña, lawyer and specialist in taxation; Oscar Borrero, economist and specialist in appraisal and market studies; and Néstor Garza, an economist who specializes in urban and regional economics.

In this course, 45 participants, selected from a group of 301 applicants, had the opportunity to meet in person for five days to exchange ideas and discuss the implementation of different urban financing instruments in their respective countries. The high number of applicants highlighted the interest in training on these topics.

The participants included professionals from different areas, including researchers, public officials, graduate students, lawyers, economists, architects, political scientists, urban planners, engineers, and geographers. They represented 14 countries in the region—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela—as well as Puerto Rico. This diversity of nationalities and backgrounds brought richness to the dialogue and allowed participants to compare their experiences related to urban financing and implementing land management instruments.

The structure and content of the course was designed to stimulate active learning, using peer exchange and practical application of the content studied. The program was composed of a mix of master classes, group exercises, case study presentations, pedagogical games, and field trips.

The thematic content moved from the general to the specific, starting with a review of the general framework of financing and land management instruments in Colombia within a Latin American context. Subsequently, basic concepts of land markets, urban spatial structure and land pricing were addressed, followed by a more detailed study of instruments, such as betterment levies, urban planning obligations, and land readjustment. The program also included sessions to study the application of these instruments in urban mobility and public housing projects.

One of the new features introduced this year was the Urban Tarot activity, a pedagogical game whose development was supported by the Lincoln Institute in 2016, and which was led on this occasion by one of its authors, María Cristina Rojas. This game aims to familiarize participants with different planning, land management, and urban financing instruments through the development of strategies that require the incorporation of these tools to solve problems inspired by Latin American cities.

José Lazarte, one of the participants, commented: “[The course] encouraged an accessible and contextualized reflection . . . integrating technical and practical knowledge in a format that stimulated interdisciplinary dialogue and strategic thinking on urban transformation.” In this regard, Rojas said: “This activity led to a lot of discussion regarding the instruments: which ones are useful, and which ones are not, for a given problem.” The game was very well received by the students and allowed the group of teachers to evaluate the level of understanding of different concepts and tools through the strategies developed by the participants and the reasoning behind them.

On the last day, the course concluded with field trips to urban mobility and land management and public housing projects in Bogotá, specifically the Ciudad Bolivar aerial cable and the “El Ensueño” partial plan. These visits allowed for first-hand observation of the application and potential of instruments that had been previously discussed in the classroom.

This connection between theory and practice helps to strengthen learning. By touring projects on the ground, speaking with local organizers, and seeing the results of policies and instruments at work, participants can more clearly understand the challenges, impacts, and potential of the tools analyzed. Finally, the experience in the field created a valuable space to discuss lessons learned and reflect on the feasibility of adapting certain strategies to each participant’s locality.

Among the most positive aspects of the course, the participants highlighted the experience of the teaching team, the variety of applications and instruments presented, the practical exercises of urban planning and capital gains estimation, and the richness offered by peer-to-peer exchange from different countries. “The environment of this course invites us to make joint reflections in the face of the scenarios that occur in different countries,” said Rafael Gómez, one of the participants.

While all attendees said they would recommend the course to others and expected it to have an impact on their work, students asked for more time to delve into the technical, political, and institutional capacities needed for effective deployment of each of the urban instruments presented in the course. In light of these suggestions, the Lincoln Institute will review its specialty courses on these tools to further foster dialogue at the regional level.

Vergel, one of the leaders, remarked that an important insight from the course “lies in the importance of generating spaces of international outreach among professionals in urban issues, allowing for comparative exercises that facilitate the exchange of experiences and knowledge on the coordination between the transport and mobility sector and the housing sector through urban development financing instruments.”

Diego Lomelli is an instructional designer and analyst at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Luis Felipe Quintanilla is a policy analyst at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Course participants visit public housing built as part of a requirement under Bogotá’s partial development plan El Ensueño. Credit: Luis Felipe Quintanilla.

This article originally appeared in Spanish in June 2025 as “Formación con propósito.”

Durante años, cierto residente de Nueva Orleans, alguien que conduce mucho por trabajo, se encontraba con algo demasiado conocido cada vez que doblaba en una esquina: calles llenas de baches y pavimentos rotos. “Mira esta maldita calle”, se decía a sí mismo. En realidad, usaba palabras más fuertes que “maldita”. Y un tiempo después, convirtió esta frase en el nombre de usuario de una cuenta de Instagram dedicada a documentar y hablar de los muchos defectos de la infraestructura de Crescent City.

Hoy en día, la cuenta, a la que llamaremos LATFS (lookatthisfuckinstreet) por su sigla en inglés, tiene más de 125.000 seguidores, incluidos empleados de agencias de la ciudad y empresas de agua cuyas cuentas etiquetó en algunas publicaciones sarcásticas. “Pensé que me bloquearían”, dijo el creador de la cuenta, que ha optado por permanecer en el anonimato. En cambio, esas agencias comenzaron a prestar atención a la cuenta y, en algunos casos, los problemas señalados (y ridiculizados) en LATFS se solucionaron con rapidez. Hoy en día, el creador de la cuenta selecciona el contenido que le envían y, si bien la cuenta no forma parte del sistema de mantenimiento de infraestructura de Nueva Orleans de manera oficial, no se puede negar que está presente. Y puede servir como ejemplo para las ciudades que quieren aprovechar los aportes de los ciudadanos para administrar el mantenimiento de la infraestructura.

El uso de la tecnología para fortalecer la comunicación entre el gobierno y los ciudadanos es, por supuesto, una práctica establecida desde hace mucho tiempo. En 1996, la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones designó el número 311 para llamadas sobre servicios gubernamentales que no sean de emergencia. Baltimore fue la primera ciudad en implementar el sistema 311 ese año y, luego, otras ciudades hicieron lo mismo, de modo que comenzaron a ofrecer una manera fácil de informar sobre baches, grafitis, semáforos que funcionan mal y otras cuestiones. Esta primera versión de colaboración abierta pronto se trasladó a la virtualidad y evolucionó hasta convertirse en sistemas basados en la web o apps que pueden (según el municipio) responder a textos, aceptar fotos o videos e incorporar software de back-end que recopilan y consolidan datos de servicio.

Además, surgieron servicios del sector privado para proporcionar a las ciudades plataformas de conexión ciudadana más fáciles de usar y eficientes. SeeClickFix, pionera en esa categoría, se creó en 2007 y fue adquirida en 2019 por CivicPlus, una firma tecnológica del sector público con más de 10.000 clientes municipales. CivicPlus ofrece varios servicios, desde software y sitios web para gobiernos locales hasta un sistema de alerta de emergencia. Una de las principales prioridades de sus clientes es hacer que estos sistemas funcionen juntos de la mejor manera posible, dice Cari Tate, directora de soluciones de CivicPlus.

Para los productos relacionados con el sistema 311, eso significa hacer que las inquietudes de los usuarios lleguen a la parte correcta del gobierno municipal sin problemas y asegurarse de que las personas se sientan escuchadas. “En el fondo, los residentes quieren que sus comunidades mejoren”, dice Tate, una veterana de SeeClickFix que se unió a CivicPlus luego de la adquisición, “y quieren asociarse con el gobierno local para que eso suceda. Pero, a menudo, no saben cómo hacerlo o sienten que sus comentarios no llegan a buen puerto”.

En parte, se trata de mejorar la funcionalidad. La revista Government Technology publicó un artículo en el que se analizaron los comentarios en la tienda de apps de 75 apps del sistema 311 de distintas ciudades y condados, y se identificó a Improve Detroit como una de las más elogiadas. La app, que utiliza el software SeeClickFix, se actualiza con regularidad para añadir nuevas funciones útiles. Por ejemplo, después de las inundaciones de 2021, el gobierno añadió una herramienta para presentar reclamos por daños causados por el agua.

Pero para que la tecnología conecte de manera efectiva a la ciudadanía con el gobierno, también es clave estar donde están las personas, y eso hoy en día es, cada vez más, en las redes sociales. Durante años, algunos municipios han publicado hashtags, como “#502pothole” (#502baches) en Louisville, que los ciudadanos podían usar para informar problemas.

Pero los usuarios de las redes sociales no necesitan una invitación para hablar sobre las fallas o imperfecciones de la infraestructura local. Y hablar sobre fallas en espacios digitales públicos a menudo se siente más satisfactorio que hacerlo en los canales oficiales. Nueva Orleans, por ejemplo, tiene una línea 311, pero a veces pareciera como una “caja negra” en comparación con la animada camaradería de Instagram, señala el creador de LATFS. Y cuando se obtienen resultados reales a través de Instagram, la atención aumenta. Un ejemplo de esto podría ser la serie de imágenes de una señal de alto caída y su reemplazo pintado a mano por los ciudadanos, que llamó la atención de un concejal de la ciudad que usó los servicios municipales para hacer una verdadera reparación y le dio crédito a LATFS en los medios locales. (Un vocero de la empresa de servicios públicos de alcantarillado y agua de la ciudad dijo que la empresa no “sigue de forma activa” a LATFS, pero conoce la cuenta y que, a menudo, la empresa de servicios públicos se entera de los problemas antes de que aparezcan en las redes sociales, haciendo referencia al número telefónico de contacto oficial que funciona en forma eficaz como la mejor vía para informar sobre los problemas).

Un desafío que enfrenta el uso práctico de las redes sociales es que las reacciones a los problemas transitorios pueden carecer de contexto. Para la planificación de la infraestructura, los datos de las redes sociales son, “en realidad, muy turbios y nada específicos”, dice Julia Kumari Drapkin, directora ejecutiva y fundadora de ISeeChange, una plataforma de datos sobre riesgos climáticos y participación comunitaria que trabaja con Nueva Orleans, Miami y otros municipios y empresas de servicios públicos. Su enfoque toma datos de las redes sociales y utiliza la IA para ayudar a crear soluciones más amplias. Da la casualidad de que ha trabajado con LATFS, ya que le solicitó que dirija a sus seguidores a la app ISeeChange durante la inundación, para que los residentes puedan cargar informes y fotos en tiempo real.

El software de ISeeChange puede combinar esa información con los datos de los clientes y “brindar información a las ciudades, las empresas de servicios públicos y de ingeniería de forma directa”, dice Drapkin. En un proyecto reciente con la firma de ingeniería y diseño Stantec, ISeeChange recopiló datos de inundaciones que ayudaron a mejorar un proyecto de infraestructura de inundaciones en Nueva Orleans, mediante la reasignación de USD 4,8 millones en fondos federales y la ampliación de más del doble de la capacidad de aguas pluviales en un vecindario de bajos ingresos. Además, sostiene que son los residentes del lugar quienes pueden proporcionar los mejores datos. (Este año, ISeeChange comenzó a recolectar informes de inundaciones y desagües pluviales para la empresa de servicios públicos de alcantarillado y agua de Nueva Orleans).

El papel de las redes sociales en la notificación de problemas de infraestructura puede ser algo desordenado, pero su gran popularidad hace que sea difícil de ignorar. El año pasado, el candidato a doctorado en sociología de la Universidad de Tulane, Alex Turvy, publicó un artículo en la revista Social Media + Society en el que analizaba las publicaciones de LATFS y los comentarios que le proporcionó el creador de la cuenta. Dividió las estrategias de los usuarios en categorías (vergüenza, burla y exposición) y argumentó que la cuenta permite a los residentes “recuperar la narrativa de los desafíos de infraestructura de su ciudad” a través del humor, la conexión y el “conocimiento grupal”. Y aunque hay mucho enojo y sarcasmo, los usuarios también intercambian explicaciones e información práctica.

Turvy reconoce tanto la utilidad de los sistemas del estilo 311 como el desafío que enfrentaría un gobierno municipal si tratara de encajonar el discurso descontento y profano de algo como LATFS. Y aunque en otros lugares han aparecido cuentas similares impulsadas por los ciudadanos (por ejemplo, PWSA Sinkholes de Pittsburgh en Instagram), muchas se esfuman si no logran atraer seguidores. Pero las ciudades aún podrían aprender de LATFS, aunque sea un caso atípico, argumenta Turvy.

“La lección principal es que las ciudades deben dejar de tratar los informes de los ciudadanos como solicitudes de servicio individuales y, en cambio, verlos como parte de una narrativa colectiva sobre cuestiones de infraestructura”, dice. Mientras que los sistemas tradicionales se sienten como una transacción, LATFS se siente como una historia compartida por la comunidad. Su éxito, señala, “destaca el poder de la narración sobre el procesamiento de servicios”. Para fomentar ese enfoque “orgánico e impulsado por los ciudadanos”, las ciudades podrían trabajar con grupos comunitarios, comunicarse de manera más proactiva y demostrar cómo se están llevando a cabo acciones basadas en los comentarios que se reciben.

Tal vez esto pueda parecer un poco utópico, pero también se superpone con las tendencias y aspiraciones de los sistemas de estilo 311. Las ciudades quieren “proporcionar un medio para que los residentes reciban respuestas y vean todo lo que se está haciendo”, dice Tate de CivicPlus. Lo que suele ocurrir es que “se ven todos los problemas, pero no se ve lo que realmente está haciendo el municipio”. Cada vez más, las ciudades buscan sistemas con análisis de datos confiables que también “brinden visibilidad y ayuden a cambiar la mentalidad y generar confianza”.

Si bien LATFS sigue siendo un foro muy irreverente centrado más que nada en las quejas y bromas y no tanto en el municipio o en las complejidades de la planificación de la infraestructura, es probable que el compromiso de la ciudad con la cuenta haya suavizado su estado de oposición original. “Tratamos de no publicar quejas sobre cuestiones que se están reparando, de las que recibo muchas”, dice su fundador. “No podemos burlarnos de la ciudad por hacer reparaciones”. Dicho esto, también se apresura a señalar que es un ciudadano, no un urbanista o un activista de la ciudad. Como él mismo dijo: “Solo soy un tipo que publica en Instagram”. Pero, a veces, esa es justamente la opinión que los municipios deben escuchar, y las personas con las que desean interactuar.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Es el autor de City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape. Publica un boletín en robwalker.substack.com.

Imagen principal: Esta señal de alto pintada a mano ganó notoriedad (e inspiró al municipio a dar una solución) después de que se subiera la foto a Instagram. Crédito: LATFS.