Walk around virtually any city in the United States, and it’s hard to miss the stark symbols of economic inequality. Restaurant workers unable to afford the food they cook and serve. Teachers and tradespeople priced out of the community in which they work. A family on the brink of poverty unable to afford treatment at the world-class hospital a mile away.

These scenes play out not just in large, expensive cities, but in small and mid-sized ones, too, including places that have worked tirelessly to jumpstart their economic engines. These persistent, almost vulgar disparities were enough to make Haegi Kwon, policy analyst at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, pursue a pointed research question: Is economic development, as a set of policies and practices that aims to produce community prosperity . . . actually working? 

In a new working paper, Kwon argues that traditional economic development approaches—such as trying to attract outside employers with promised infrastructure or tax breaks (recall how cities bent over backwards trying to woo Amazon as it sought a second home)—often produce uneven growth that can deepen disadvantage and exacerbate longstanding inequities. “Just because there’s overall economic growth at the city level, it doesn’t mean those benefits trickle down,” Kwon says. “A lot of times you end up seeing increased disparities within cities.” 

Evidence suggests that when a new tech company or other sought-after employer enters a community, for example, the benefits mostly flow toward homeowners and people who are highly educated. “But if you’re low-income and you’re a renter, then you’re probably going to experience some vulnerability, and at worst displacement,” Kwon says. 

Historically, the goal of most local economic development programs has been to bring in more, says Jessie Grogan, director of reduced poverty and spatial inequality at the Lincoln Institute. “More jobs, more investment, more businesses—there’s a perception that you need to grow, you need more stuff, and that’s what economic development success looks like,” Grogan says. But as part of a research project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Grogan and Kwon are asking community leaders to challenge those long-held assumptions. 

In her working paper, Kwon introduces a new three-part framework for thinking about economic development—one that targets resident health, equity, and wellbeing as the explicit goals of such investments, rather than just growth.

Looking In, Leveraging, and Locking

To gain a new perspective on economic development, Kwon explored existing theoretical frameworks such as the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) model and the slow-growth, locally resourced concept of “scaling deep” to achieve more durable success. Applying elements of these alternative perspectives, Kwon has proposed a three-step framework that represents a community-centered approach to economic development: looking in, leveraging, and locking.

“This framework emphasizes the importance of identifying and nurturing existing assets, collaborating to leverage these assets, and promoting greater community stability,” Kwon says. 

Economic development practitioners should start by looking in, she says. That includes some inclusive and collective soul-searching to identify a community’s issues and shared priorities—but it also means recognizing assets already in place to help attain those goals. Every community has something of value on which it can build—some combination of natural, social, cultural, human, political, economic, or built resources.

Community assets might be historical or geographic advantages, such as a working waterfront, key railway, or abundant green space or city-owned lots. They could include institutions, such as a university or museum, or a patchwork of small nonprofits that have earned trust by developing deep roots in different parts of the city. And then there’s the often-overlooked value of the people and cultures that comprise a community—the local knowledge, lived wisdom, and diverse skill sets of the existing residents.

“There might be a lot of skill and talent in those communities that has just not been recognized,” Kwon says, such as informal businesses that could be formalized, or entrepreneurial immigrants whose contributions are often ignored or underutilized. “If you look deeper, there’s a lot of capital and skill that they’re bringing with them.” 

Leveraging those assets means making the most of them by collaborating, sharing resources, and building off even modest advantages to create an impact greater than the sum of the inputs.

For example, bringing together nonprofit organizations and other institutions that have operated in competition with or in isolation from each other, and getting them to complement each other’s work—by sharing information, developing referral systems, and coordinating activities to avoid duplicative efforts—can help them achieve shared goals. Andrew Crosson, founder and chief executive of the regional social investment fund Invest Appalachia, calls this approach the “stone soup” of economic development, with organizations pooling their limited resources and building upon each other’s work.

There’s one more crucial step to the puzzle, Kwon says, and that’s locking investments into place to ensure sustained stability and prosperity for the community.

“Locking is about creating virtuous cycles of growth,” Kwon says, often by investing in workforce training, wealth building, and entrepreneurship efforts. “Local business owners are more likely to reinvest, so the more you have businesses owned by people who live locally, the more likely you are to get this kind of reinvestment in the community.” She notes that shared ownership models such as community land trusts can also help secure continued stability and wellbeing as new investment flows into a community. 

Appalachian Assets 

Kwon’s framework isn’t just informed by existing research literature; a number of organizations nationwide have been putting similar steps into practice, with encouraging results. 

Before launching Invest Appalachia, for example, Crosson and other members of the Appalachia Funders Network spent years conducting an “open-eyed analysis” of the region’s opportunities and gaps within a historical and economic context—looking in, if you will. They identified the region’s active network of nonprofits as a crucial asset. “We have the benefit of some networks of nonprofits that have been doing community economic development work for years, with really sharp, ground-truthed, multi-year track records,” Crosson says.

“They did a very seemingly homegrown exercise in getting everyone who touches the proverbial elephant together to say, ‘Okay, let’s work together. What do we want, and how can we think about developing shared priorities and then bringing in resources around those priorities in a more structured and intentional way?” Grogan says. “They got all the players organized and rowing in the same direction.”

One of the most powerful ways Invest Appalachia has been able to leverage its modest grant dollars for greater impact, meanwhile, is through credit enhancements. These arrangements allow the fund to essentially absorb excess risk on behalf of low-wealth businesses, builders, and mission-driven lenders—borrowers who will pay back the money, but lack the collateral to qualify for traditional financing, or who need more flexible lending terms. It’s not entirely unlike having someone with financial stability cosign a car loan or apartment lease for someone else.

“You have to break the cycle of scarcity and disinvestment and lack of investment readiness,” Crosson says. “And I think the best tool that we have as a field is credit enhancements, and specifically grant-funded credit enhancements—like loan guarantees, loan loss reserves, conditional repayment loans, unsecured bridge loans, things like that—that can help to get money into a project to get the juices flowing. You’re giving people a chance to build assets.”

Every credit enhancement unlocks investment capital for projects and borrowers who couldn’t otherwise access it, Crosson says. “It allows community lenders and impact investors to put repayable dollars into things that are investment-worthy but not quite investment-ready.”

One simple and effective example, Crosson says, is providing uncollateralized bridge loans to nonprofits and small businesses that want to invest in rooftop solar. On-site solar generation is a win-win, improving climate resiliency while reducing operational expenses, and organizations can get up to 50 percent of the installation cost reimbursed through federal tax credits—but not until they file their taxes a year later. Invest Appalachia worked with the Appalachian Solar Finance Fund, a core partner in the clean energy sector, to identify this major bottleneck in solar development and develop a solution. By extending short-term bridge loans—which carry very little risk, since they’re essentially backed by the Internal Revenue Service—Invest Appalachia has helped provide nonprofits like the Just for Kids Advocacy Center and Howell’s Mill Summer Camp, both in West Virginia, with the upfront money they need to invest in solar.

The majority of those loans will be repaid and then reinvested, Crosson says, allowing grant money to go farther and last longer. “That money will come back, it will recycle, and we’ll get to use it again and again and again.” At the same time, the repayable nature of credit-enhanced loans helps lock in prosperity by setting projects on a path toward long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency.

Locking in demands a systems-level approach, Crosson adds. “If we do individual transactions—one factory here, one housing development there, in the way that people think about economic development traditionally—that’s just not going to add up, especially in a place with the socioeconomic characteristics of our region,” he says. Clustered investments, though, can yield compounding benefits.

“A few targeted interventions can generate the momentum needed to sort of catalyze an entire industry,” he says. “We also think about that in terms of geographies, where doing a cluster of deals, businesses, and projects allows that community to achieve some level of self-sustaining growth and inclusive growth that starts to spill over to the communities around it.”

Russell: A Place of Promise

While Invest Appalachia serves an entire region spanning multiple states, the same principles can be applied at the city or even neighborhood level.

In Louisville, Kentucky, for example, local government has been countering decades of disinvestment in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Russell with a focus on revitalization and staying out in front of displacement pressures. Recognizing the value of both the place itself and its people, a public-private initiative called Russell: A Place of Promise has been guiding that effort since 2018 with an uncommonly profound and prolonged commitment to the neighborhood’s crucial asset: its residents. 

“Oftentimes, what you see in community development projects is a focus more on the built environment, rather than the actual people,” says Cassandra Webb, co-lead of Russell: A Place of Promise (RPOP) and director of the Place of Promise initiative at Cities United. And as new buildings, facades, trees, streetlights, and other overdue investments make a place more attractive, she says, “folks enjoy the resources and the goods and services that are there, but the people who call that neighborhood home can no longer afford to live there. So part of our strategy was, how do we make sure that folks are a part of building out what RPOP is going to be, and that they also have the opportunities—whether it’s workforce development, greater job opportunities, more sustainable housing—so they can afford to stay in their community?” 

RPOP leaders have been listening to, learning from, and learning with neighborhood residents, not only through ongoing conversations, block party events, and leadership education sessions, but by taking residents on paid trips to explore examples of shared ownership in other cities. Webb accompanied a group of about 20 Russell residents on a trip to Atlanta, for example, where they met with peer organizations to learn firsthand about community land trusts. 

“It’s about investing in the people of the community,” Webb says, “and as we invest in them, and work in partnership with them, being able to gain insights that then help us inform our strategies on the place side.”

Investing in Russell’s residents has helped cultivate another important, hard-won asset: trust.

“The city is not necessarily seen as a trusted partner in historically Black neighborhoods, because the city has been a driver of a lot of the disparity,” says Theresa Zawacki, RPOP co-lead and policy executive on loan from Louisville Metro Government. “And even in present times, the city is seen as a source of state violence, a source of disparate impact, a source of unkept promises. . . . So there was a lot of relationship maintenance and trust-building at first.”

Those efforts got a boost in late 2019, when RPOP hired a resident named Jackie Floyd—known to many in the community as “the mayor of Russell”—as a full-time outreach member. The pandemic prompted some pivoting, but RPOP continued to engage and support residents through the lockdown, providing local families with care packages containing health and hygiene items, kids’ activities, and fresh food grown by a collective of Black farmers. A program called the Russell for Russell Residents Coalition coalesced online, and drew more than two dozen participants, aged 22 to 72, who helped shape a set of Black wealth creation strategies and craft the group’s Partnership Pledge. Since then, RPOP has graduated 62 residents through its small business accelerator, with one cohort specifically focused on childcare businesses, and built both single-family and income-generating duplex homes in partnership with a Black-led affordable housing developer, Rebound.

In further community workgroups, residents (who earned a stipend for participating) learned about and helped define the parameters of new neighborhood investments, from models of community ownership to universal basic income programs—including the YALift! guaranteed income pilot that RPOP helped create and implement in Louisville along with Metro United Way.

Russell: A Place of Promise also has a key place-based asset to leverage toward its mission of creating lasting Black wealth in the neighborhood. Louisville Metro Government has committed a five-acre plot of vacant land to the organization, sitting at the intersection of 30th and Madison streets—across from an athletic facility that draws tens of thousands of visitors annually.

As RPOP prepares to redevelop the property in its first major capital project, residents are deeply involved in charting the course. The goal is to create a mixed-use community focal point, defined by shared ownership, to act as both a catalyst for generational wealth and a bulwark against displacement.

RPOP and Russell residents have been exploring several different models of shared ownership, Zawacki says, including community land trusts and real estate investment trusts. But whatever form that eventually takes, the hope is that it will help lock in place a foundation for long-term stability and opportunity. “Where we’ve landed at this point is that residents are interested in the idea of having some amount of financial ownership in 30th and Madison Street, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be something that pays dividends,” Zawacki says. “It could be something that allows for the profit that comes off of that property, after it stabilizes, to be something that they direct in an investment back into the neighborhood.”

Residents also see the opportunity to own a business at the 30th and Madison Street complex as its own form of community ownership. “We’re actually having conversations with seven- and eight-year-olds, about how one day, when the site is built, when you’re 15 or 16 years old, your business that you’re thinking about could actually be at 30th and Madison,” Webb says.

Prioritizing Well-Being

Both Invest Appalachia and Russell: A Place of Promise are explicitly prioritizing resident well-being and working toward that goal with a promising mix of strategies, Kwon says. And while many of those initiatives are fairly new or works in progress, she’s excited to see the impacts they’ll have on their communities in years to come.  

“We’re not saying that everything’s going to be rainbows and unicorns, but Russell, for example, is really looking at cooperative structures, clear ways of trying to ensure that at the city level, you have dedicated, permanently affordable housing,” she says. “They’re not just looking at bringing in a chain supermarket—they’re looking at, how do we build wealth within the community? How do we ensure affordable housing so people can stay, and also ensure a sort of cultural stability as well?”

Indeed, stability may be just as important to a community as economic growth. “The way I’m starting to think about it is that ideal places are stable across generations,” Grogan says. “You have enough opportunities that your kids want to stay here, but you’re not so unaffordable that your kids can’t stay here.”

And stability isn’t purely an economic matter, either; it’s also about autonomy. So as RPOP prepares to incorporate itself as a standalone nonprofit this year, its outgoing co-leads are making sure the board is composed mostly, if not entirely, of neighborhood residents and small business owners. “Our board members that we have now, four are Russell residents that have been along with us over the past few years, that have gone on those trips with us,” Webb says, “and now are very comfortable and knowledgeable about how we move this work forward.”

Crosson says one of the key, and hopefully lasting, aspects of Invest Appalachia’s work has been increasing capacity in the region—not just the capacity for technical expertise or securing funding, but the ability to put it to use in service of the community’s agreed-upon goals. “One of our partners uses the analogy of watering the soil,” he says. “If there’s a drought, and you pour water on the soil, it runs off, right? And if a region is disinvested and under-resourced, you can’t just throw money at it and hope that’s going to solve everything.”

 Zawacki credits Louisville Metro Government for supporting Russell: A Place of Promise with a steady palm rather than a strong fist. The city doesn’t hold their grant money or dictate how they use it, and has provided land that the organization would have struggled to purchase at market rates. “That opportunity to be entrepreneurial with the resources of government, but without the direction and control of government, has been essential to our success,” Zawacki says. “That is definitely one of the takeaways from the last five years of the work: having the resources is great, but having the freedom is even greater.”

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

Lead image: A shuttered movie theater in southern California. Credit: Michael Warren via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

This content was developed through a partnership between the Lincoln Institute and the American Planning Association as part of the APA Foresight practice. It was originally published by APA in Planning. 

Blink twice and something new in the world is unfolding. It’s dizzying to think about, let alone remain informed about. Technological and social innovations continue to emerge and evolve. New economic trends and signals in the political arena are surfacing. And while new challenges and ever more crises keep us up at night, innovative developments promise potential solutions.

To stay a step ahead of the issues impacting the future of planning and our communities, the American Planning Association (APA) will publish its 2024 Trend Report for Planners in January, in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The APA Foresight team, together with APA’s Trend Scouting Foresight Community, identifies existing, emerging, and potential future trends that may impact the planning profession in the future. Planners need to understand these drivers of change, learn how they can prepare for them, and identify when it’s time to act.

The report includes more than 100 trends and shows how some trends are interconnected in various future scenarios — like the future of housing in a world of hybrid work, advanced AI capabilities and its potential impacts on planning decisions, and the future of climate mitigation amid current uncertainties about global collaboration and tech innovations. Many of the trends identified in previous reports remain relevant (and can be explored in the APA Trend Universe) but there are new ones, as well.

There also is the recognition that we are moving into a “polycrisis.” The climate emergency and its close connection to current global challenges — such as food insecurity, the migrant crisis, economic warfare, resource scarcity, and social disputes — highlights the high risk of failing to mitigate and adapt to climate change on a global scale. Holistic approaches are needed to resolve this developing polycrisis.

You’ll Work in a Bespoke Office — at Home or Downtown

As the pandemic recedes, the world of work continues to evolve. In the post-pandemic U.S., a dominant trend is the adoption of a hybrid workstyle combining remote and in-office work. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 41 percent of remote-capable workers now follow hybrid schedules, up from 35 percent in January 2022. During that time, the number of people working from home full time decreased from 43 to 35 percent, but this is still significantly higher than the 7 percent who worked from home pre-pandemic. Worldwide, over one-third of office desks remain unoccupied throughout the week, though Asian and European employees have returned to workplaces faster than their U.S. counterparts.

The remaining question is what the future of the office might look like. While the number of fully remote workers seems to be going down in the U.S., space for the home office or a co-working space nearby will still be needed for hybrid workers. Meanwhile, for the companies that offer hybrid workstyles, we currently see two trends regarding the use of office space. Companies that are operating with shared offices or concierge office services tend to downsize their overall office space. Other companies emphasize collaboration and team building during their in-office time and therefore require more office space than before the pandemic to accommodate conference rooms, collaboration spaces, and space for creative activities.

Meanwhile, office-to-residential conversions are gaining interest. To further accelerate this trend, the Biden administration launched a commercial-to-residential conversion initiative in October 2023. Given these diverse directions and emerging trends, it looks like the office of the future will be fully bespoke and tailored to the customer’s needs, which will vary depending on emerging workstyles. —Petra Hurtado, PhD, and Sagar Shah, PhD, AICP

Climate Displacement on the Rise

In 2022, nearly 33 million people across the globe were displaced due to natural disasters, such as floods, drought, and wildfire, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva. This far exceeds averages hovering near 20 million people in previous years.

In the U.S., climate displacement is a growing challenge. More than 3 million Americans lost their homes to natural disasters in 2022. As climate change continues to worsen, these numbers are expected to grow and even accelerate. By 2050, more than 1 billion people may be displaced due to climate-related impacts, according to the international think tank Institute for Economics and Peace. Adaptation at the local level will be critical. It will be imperative to prepare for the movement of people due to climate-related impacts and to more proactively retreat from especially high-risk areas.

Renewed discussion in the face of forced climate displacement has sought to better characterize managed retreat as a package of potential actions, rather than the wholesale abandonment of at-risk areas and the buyout of homes and properties. A June 2023 report from the University of Massachusetts Boston, together with representatives from coastal communities across the state, identified a variety of complementary tools for managed retreat, including enhanced setbacks, deed restrictions, green infrastructure, and an array of zoning and planning actions.

Yet, even as communities begin to understand the potential for these actions in concert with strategic retreat and buyout programs, continued development in hazardous areas remains the norm. In North Carolina, for example, for every buyout, 10 new homes were built in floodplains, according to a 2023 article in the Journal of the American Planning Association. Often, this is a result of market and insurance-based incentives that aren’t pricing long-term risk into development costs and home prices. —Scarlet Andrzejczak and Joe DeAngelis, AICP

Car-centric Planning Drives Inequities

Local governments and planners are overwhelmed with many emerging transportation systems popping up. While there are lots of exciting innovations in the transportation sector, the real story is that the ways cities are currently responding to these new systems are increasing inequities and harming communities. Today’s more diverse transportation system needs a different approach to transportation planning — one that doesn’t focus on cars.

Most new alternatives to the car are more sustainable, safer, healthier, and potentially easier to deploy in equitable ways. Usage is going up, with e-bikes on the rise in the U.S. for a few years (with 2022 sales topping $1.3 billion) and the popularity of bike-share programs and the market for cargo bikes also continuing to grow. However, cities often are unprepared for these new transportation options resulting — in some cases — to bans instead of plans to integrate them into existing systems.

Meanwhile, inequitable, car-centric planning practices continue to dominate. The rising number of traffic deaths and decreasing traffic safety, coupled with the lack of appropriate infrastructure for emerging systems, show the inequity in current transportation planning. While e-mobility is a part of the solution when it comes to decarbonizing transportation (as was noted in the 2023 Trend Report), electric vehicles (EVs) also come with many negative effects, including the concentration of public EV chargers mostly in wealthy areas.

Assigning space by means of transportation instead of purpose isn’t working anymore. A holistic, comprehensive approach toward equitable transportation planning and funding is needed. —Zhenia Dulko and Petra Hurtado

‘Made in America’ Comes Roaring Back

Geopolitical goals are becoming an increasingly deciding factor in economic policy and international trade. Self-sufficiency and independence from rival powers are resulting in an increase in friend-shoring and onshoring, financed through subsidies, a variety of policies, visa bans, and even exclusion of companies from specific markets. This includes, for example, U.S. policies toward certain high-tech products coming from China. Additionally, U.S. companies are actively seeking alternative manufacturing destinations to replace China, moving to countries such as India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, manufacturing is coming back to the U.S., supported by new federal incentives to promote domestic manufacturing of crucial components, such as computer chips and EV parts. This trend has had tangible effects, with the sector adding nearly 800,000 jobs since early 2021 — reaching employment levels not seen since 2008. Additionally, U.S. manufacturing employment has exceeded the peak of the previous business cycle for the first time since the late 1970s, according to jobs data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But workforce challenges persist. As of March 2023, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said there were still 693,000 open positions in the manufacturing sector — and, according to some estimates, there may be around 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.

Additionally, the introduction of the Tech Hubs program — a $500 million economic development initiative — is fostering technology hubs across the U.S., addressing regional disparities and promoting technology-driven economic growth in traditionally industrial regions. The Biden administration’s initiative aims to transform 31 regions into globally competitive innovation centers. These Tech Hubs span urban and rural areas, focusing on industries such as quantum computing, biotechnology, and clean energy. —Petra Hurtado and Sagar Shah

Extinct Species Get a Mammoth Rebirth

The concept of bringing back extinct species, discussed as part of a deep dive into rewilding in the 2023 Trend Report, has already seen some significant recent updates. Resurrection biology is centered on the revival or recreation of extinct species of plants and animals. The current destruction of the natural world, the impacts of climate change, and the steady march of ecosystem loss are leading to the rapid extinction of species across the world. Notably, resurrection biology might be critical both for bringing back long-lost species and reversing the ongoing extinction of current species.

De-extinction science relies on three different methods: cloning (using DNA of extinct species to clone new animals), back-breeding (for example, selectively breeding elephants to recreate mammoths), and gene editing (adding or removing traits from existing species’ DNA to recreate extinct species). Media interest largely centers on the resurrection of mammoths, dodos, and other high-profile extinctions.

However, this concept could be applied in more mundane but vitally important circumstances, such as insect extinctions — which are a major threat to the resilience of the global food supply and the health of ecosystems. This technology might one day help to reverse major impacts by reviving key extinct species. Planners should consider not only the long-term implications of this technology but also the ecosystem loss and the rapid species extinction occurring today that drive its continued relevancy. —Joe DeAngelis and Petra Hurtado

Co-creation Mirrors DIY Trends

Urban dwellers are increasingly embracing do-it-yourself (DIY) methods and self-organization. A trend toward co-creation is emerging as a collaborative approach in which planners and end users jointly develop solutions. This process emphasizes deep user engagement facilitated by new technologies. Consequently, there’s growing skepticism toward traditional experts and a surge in the creator economy.

Communities are becoming more proactive, self-regulated, and interconnected. Start-ups like Urbanist AI — leveraging advanced AI capabilities — are empowering users to step into the role of “citizen planners,” allowing them to actively co-design their surroundings. While this makes the planning process more intricate and less predictable, it also ensures a more inclusive approach. Such technology-driven self-organization and co-creation could significantly reshape the future of the planning profession and its approaches. —Zhenia Dulko and Petra Hurtado

It’s Time to Welcome the Robots

Robots of all shapes and sizes are entering our cities. Seoul, South Korea, has recently developed plans for a robot-friendly city, proactively envisioning the wide-ranging integration of robots into everyday life. While “personal delivery devices” that deliver packages and meals in the air and on the ground are already coming, trends point to the potential for robots to fulfill a variety of other functions within society, including taking care of the very young and the elderly.

In nations grappling with the challenge of low birth rates, especially in Europe and Asia, the burden of care and the fulfilling of critical functions within cities may increasingly fall upon robots and other autonomous technologies. This includes mundane but vital services, such as street cleaning, public safety, and transit services.

With potential widespread adoption of these recent innovations looming, cities will need to be prepared to effectively integrate and consider them in their plans and ensure they won’t disrupt accessibility of public spaces. Some ideas for how to do that are coming from the Urban Robotics Foundation by bringing urban stakeholders together to create solutions to integrate new technology into cities and communities. —Senna Catenacci and Joe DeAngelis

Lead image: Urbanist AI allows community members to co-create with planners — and participate more fully in the design of places. Credit: Urbanist AI.

What comes to mind upon hearing Scranton, Pennsylvania? For some, it’s the location of the fictional company Dunder Mifflin, from the TV comedy series “The Office.” Others may know it as President Biden’s hometown. Hard-core urbanists will note that it’s also where Jane Jacobs grew up, before moving to New York City to do battle with Robert Moses.

Ultimately, though, much of what Scranton is about these days is what legacy cities are confronting across the US and indeed all over the world: its postindustrial future, now that the manufacturing industries of yesteryear are long gone.

In the case of Scranton, a railroad crossroads in northeast Pennsylvania, its industrial riches were built on mining and processing coal, as well as iron and steel and textiles, and a heyday of some of the nation’s first electric lights and electrified streetcars, which earned it the moniker the “Electric City.” Though some defense-related manufacturing remains, the city is facing a new frontier. Essentially, Scranton must reinvent itself as a metropolis that was built, beginning more than a century ago, for purposes that no longer exist.

Into this moment comes Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, a transplant from Oregon with an MBA and a stint in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, to help try to forge a way forward. The 43-year-old mother of two was sworn in January 2020 after the previous chief executive resigned and pleaded guilty to corruption charges. She won reelection to a full term in November 2021, and is the first woman to hold the office.

“The Scranton story now is one, I think, of resilience and creativity,” Cognetti said in an interview for the Land Matters podcast. The establishment of the coal and textile industries “really set the tone for the type of entrepreneurship that we are still known for and that we’re looking to have more of in Scranton.”

Earlier generations recognized that local economy needed to be diversified, she said, so the city wasn’t tied to an anchor industry that would inevitably diminish. As a result, the city has “lots of educational institutions, we have hospitals, we have healthcare, we have services. We also still have 11 percent of our jobs that are based in manufacturing. . . . There’s a lot of different family-owned, smaller businesses. That’s really important for our economy.”

The efforts at reinvention are readily seen in projects such as Boomerang Park, site of a former gas plant, and in the transformation of the Scranton Lace Factory, which once employed thousands of people churning out curtains, tablecloths, parachutes, and camouflage netting before closing in 2002. The abandoned campus of red-brick factory buildings is now being turned into a mixed-use project with offices, homes, retail spaces, and event venues.

Those kinds of adaptive reuse projects are “unique and really catching people’s attention, so folks want to be there,” Cognetti said. “That’s something that I think we can replicate.”

She has been bullish on Scranton since she went there nearly 20 years ago and ordered a sandwich at a restaurant run by her future husband. She had grown up in Beaverton, Oregon, and graduated from the University of Oregon Clark Honors College with a BA in English literature; she ended up in Pennsylvania working for political campaigns including Barack Obama’s first run for President. She became a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for International Affairs at the US Treasury Department, was an investment advisor in New York City, and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School as well.

Before becoming mayor, Cognetti advised the Pennsylvania Auditor General on oversight of public school districts and care for older adults, and served on the Scranton School Board.

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This interview will be available online and in print in Land Lines magazine, as the latest installment in the Mayor’s Desk series. The first 20 Q&As with mayors from around the world have been compiled in a new book, with an introduction by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Further Reading

Now the mayor of Scranton, PA, Paige Gebhardt Cognetti’s passion for equity inspired by her time in CHC (University of Oregon Clark Honors College)

Scranton Elects First Female Mayor by Overwhelming Margin (Penn Live)

America’s Legacy Cities: Building an Equitable Renaissance (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy)

Remaking Local Economies (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy)

How Small and Midsize Legacy Cities Can Pursue Equitable, Comprehensive “Greening” (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy)

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: Paige Cognetti. Credit: Courtesy photo.

During an era defined by racial reckonings, the COVID pandemic, rapid technological advances, and the unyielding climate emergency, mayors around the world have been thrust into once unimaginable situations. In Mayor’s Desk, an inspiring collection written by Anthony Flint and published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 20 innovative leaders from five continents share their struggles and successes, along with strategies for making cities more equitable, sustainable, and healthy places to live and work. From Berkeley to Bogotá, Mayor’s Desk proves that progress is possible, even—or maybe especially—in turbulent times, and that local governments are the drivers of global change. 

Since 2018, Lincoln Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Flint has conducted interviews with mayors of large and small cities in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America about their groundbreaking approaches to our most pressing urban challenges. Mayor’s Desk interviews appear regularly in the Lincoln Institute’s Land Lines magazine and Land Matters podcast. 

In these forthright conversations, local leaders describe how they are using land policy to improve the quality of life for the people who live in their communities. From building a new bike lane to weaning an entire city off fossil fuels, from piloting new sources of revenue to stopping speculators in their tracks, the strategies and solutions in this collection can be of value far beyond their local contexts. The conversations also reveal how the personalities, backgrounds, and values of these mayors shape their leadership styles, whether they are making modest incremental improvements or bold transformations. 

A journalistic time capsule of innovative leadership and tangible change, this book can serve as an inspiration and valuable resource for anyone who wants to understand and influence the evolution of their cities. 

“For mayors, activists, urban planners, students, and citizens of every kind, these pages offer a sample of some of the bold ideas that have been emerging from cities over the past decade,” writes Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies and former mayor of New York City, in the book’s foreword. “The mayors on these pages have differing political viewpoints and party memberships, and that underscores one of the book’s messages: Just as good ideas transcend national borders, they transcend political ideology, too.” 

About the Author 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, contributing editor to Land Lines, and host of the Land Matters podcast. He is a correspondent for Bloomberg CityLab and the Boston Globe, where he writes about architecture and urban design, and has been a journalist for over 30 years. He is the author of Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow (New Harvest); Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (Random House); and This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America (Johns Hopkins University Press), as well as coeditor of Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes (Lincoln Institute). 

Lead image: Mayor Aki-Sawyerr, center, helps celebrate the installation of marketplace shades in Freetown. Credit: Office of Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr.

Aftab Pureval, electo en 2021, está haciendo historia como el primer alcalde asiático estadounidense de Cincinnati. Se crio en el suroeste de Ohio, fue hijo de primera generación de estadounidenses y trabajó en una juguetería cuando estaba en la secundaria. Después de graduarse en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Estatal de Ohio, Pureval ejerció varios cargos en la comunidad jurídica, entre ellos, abogado en Procter & Gamble, antes de ingresar al servicio público. Ejerció como secretario del Tribunal del condado de Hamilton de 2016 a 2021, y fue el primer demócrata en ocupar dicha oficina en más de 100 años. Pureval reside en el norte del barrio de Clifton, en Cincinnati, con su esposa y sus dos hijos. A principios de este año, habló con nuestro miembro sénior, Anthony Flint, para el pódcast Land Matters. Esta transcripción se editó por motivos de espacio y claridad.

Anthony Flint: Has atraído mucha atención por lo que algunas personas denominan una “responsabilidad heroica” de preservar el parque de viviendas unifamiliares de la ciudad y mantenerlo lejos de las manos de los inversionistas externos. Explíquenos brevemente cuáles fueron los logros en colaboración con Port of Cincinnati.

Aftab Pureval: Solo para brindar un poco más de contexto, Cincinnati es una de las antiguas ciudades industriales. Tenemos una larga y orgullosa tradición de ser el destino final del Ferrocarril Subterráneo. Fuimos la puerta de entrada a la libertad para muchos esclavos que escapaban de esa experiencia horrible. Tenemos muchos vecindarios históricos, muchas construcciones históricas, y tenemos mucha infraestructura antigua y viviendas unifamiliares antiguas, lo que, sumado al hecho de que somos una ciudad asequible en el contexto nacional, nos convierte en el blanco principal de los inversionistas institucionales.

Desafortunadamente, Cincinnati figura en lista nacional tras lista nacional en cuanto a la tasa de aumento de los alquileres. El factor principal que impulsa esta situación proviene de esos inversionistas, que no son de la ciudad y no tienen ningún interés en el bienestar de Cincinnati y sus inquilinos, y que acaparan todas las viviendas unifamiliares baratas, no hacen nada para invertir en ellas, pero duplican o triplican los alquileres de un día para el otro. La ciudad está haciendo muchas cosas a través de litigaciones, por medio de la aplicación del código . . . para hacerles saber que no estamos jugando. Si vas a tener un comportamiento depredador en nuestra comunidad, no te defenderemos.

Además, hemos tomado medidas en una etapa temprana para prevenir que esto suceda al asociarnos con The Port . . . Cuando muchas propiedades salieron a la venta porque un inversionista institucional las incluyó en un bloque de venta, The Port gastó US$ 14,5 millones para comprar más de 190 viviendas unifamiliares, y superó las apuestas de otros 13 inversionistas institucionales . . . Durante el año pasado, The Port trabajó para modificar esas propiedades a fin de que cumplan con los requisitos [y de encontrar] compradores calificados, a menudo, ciudadanos que están trabajando en la pobreza o de clase media-baja, que jamás han poseído una vivienda.

Este año estamos trabajando en tres de las 194 de esas viviendas disponibles para la venta. Es un gran éxito en desde donde se lo mire . . . pero es solo una herramienta en la que The Port y la ciudad están trabajando para aumentar la capacidad de pago de la vivienda en todos nuestros barrios.

AF: ¿Qué aprendió de esto que pueda transferirse a otras ciudades? Se requiere mucho capital para superar la apuesta de un inversionista institucional.

AP: Es verdad, se requieren muchos fondos. Por eso es que necesitamos más flexibilidad del gobierno federal y del estatal para brindarles a las municipalidades las herramientas necesarias para evitar que esto suceda en una primera instancia. Ahora, una vez que un inversionista institucional clava sus garras en una comunidad, no hay mucho que la ciudad pueda hacer para responsabilizarlo.

Como hemos visto, la mejor estrategia es comprar grandes cantidades de propiedades en una etapa temprana. Muchas ciudades reciben muchos dólares del gobierno federal por medio del Plan de Rescate Estadounidense (ARP, por su sigla en inglés). Hemos usado gran parte de los dólares del ARP no solo para que el dinero llegue a las manos de las personas que más lo necesitan, lo que es de vital importancia en este momento, sino también para asociarnos a otras alianzas público-privadas o a The Port, a fin de proporcionarles los recursos necesarios para comprar grandes cantidades de suelo y conservarlo.

Este es un momento único para las ciudades que tienen más flexibilidad [con] los recursos que provienen del gobierno federal. Incentivaría a todos los alcaldes y consejos a que realmente piensen de forma crítica sobre el uso de los fondos, no solo en el corto plazo, sino también en el largo plazo, para enfrentar a algunas de estas fuerzas macroeconómicas.

AF: Cincinnati se convirtió en un destino de residencia más atractivo, y la población aumentó ligeramente tras años de recesión. ¿Considera a Cincinnati como un refugio del clima o de la pandemia? ¿Qué implicaciones tiene este crecimiento?

AP: Lo que amo de mi trabajo como alcalde es que no me centro necesariamente en los próximos dos o cuatro años, sino en los próximos 100 años. En este momento, estamos atravesando un cambio de paradigma debido a la pandemia. La forma en la que vivimos, trabajamos y jugamos está cambiando drásticamente. El trabajo remoto está transformando por completo nuestro estilo de vida económico en todo el país, pero, en particular, aquí en el Medio Oeste.

No me cabe duda de que debido al cambio climático, debido al aumento del costo de vida en la costa, habrá una migración hacia el interior. No sé si será entre los próximos 50 o 75 años, pero sucederá. Estamos viendo cómo grandes empresas toman decisiones con base en el cambio climático. Tan solo a dos horas al norte de Cincinnati, Intel está invirtiendo US$ 200.000 millones para crear la planta semiconductora más amplia del país, atraída por nuestro acceso a agua dulce y la resiliencia climática de nuestra región.

Ahora, no me malinterpreten: el cambio climático nos afecta a todos . . . pero en Ohio y Cincinnati, no observamos los incendios forestales, las sequías, los huracanes, los terremotos, la erosión costera que vemos en otras partes del país, lo que nos hace un refugio seguro del cambio climático no solo para la inversión privada sino también para las personas.

Cincinnati está creciendo, en parte, porque, en este momento, nuestra economía se está expandiendo, pero creo que realmente veremos un crecimiento exponencial en las próximas décadas debido a estos factores masivos que empujan a la gente hacia el interior del país. Para asegurarnos de que en el futuro las inversiones y el crecimiento demográfico no desplacen a nuestros residentes actuales, tenemos que estabilizar el mercado ahora y prepararnos para tal crecimiento..

AF: ¿Cuáles son los cambios en el uso del suelo y las mejoras de transporte en las que se está concentrando con relación a esto?

AP: Si queremos que esto salga bien, debemos hacer una revisión y una reforma integrales de nuestras políticas. Nos estuvimos reuniendo con las partes interesadas para [explorar cómo] se vería una Cincinnati moderna. Creo que se vería como un barrio denso y diverso por el que se podría caminar, y tendría un buen transporte público e inversiones en arte público. Ahora mismo, la zonificación de la ciudad de Cincinnati no está promoviendo esos tipos de barrios. Cerca del 70 por ciento de nuestra ciudad se zonificó exclusivamente para uso unifamiliar, lo que representa una restricción artificial en la cantidad de oferta que podemos crear. A su vez, esto está aumentando los alquileres y los impuestos a la propiedad de forma artificial, lo que está haciendo que muchos de nuestros antiguos residentes, incluso aquellos que poseen sus viviendas, se vean desplazados.

Si nos tomamos con seriedad la desconcentración de la pobreza y la desegregación de nuestra ciudad, entonces tenemos que analizar las prohibiciones de unidades multifamiliares. Tenemos que analizar los requisitos de estacionamiento para empresas y viviendas. Tenemos que considerar el desarrollo orientado al transporte público junto con nuestras líneas de tránsito rápido de autobuses. Tenemos que considerar oportunidades creativas para crear más viviendas como unidades accesorias, pero nada de esto es fácil . . . Tengo la convicción de que podemos lograr algunos cambios sustanciales para nuestro código de zonificación a fin de propiciar una mayor capacidad de pago, fomentar más transporte público y, simplemente, ser una ciudad más ecológica. En este punto, asumimos el compromiso de que, cuando estén disponibles, solo compraremos vehículos para la cuidad que sean eléctricos. Tenemos la granja solar administrada por una ciudad más grande de todo el país, lo que contribuye significativamente a nuestro consumo de energía.

AF: Un poco de esto es volver al futuro, porque la ciudad tenía tranvías. ¿Tiene la sensación de que existe una apreciación de eso, de que esos tiempos, en realidad, hicieron que la ciudad funcione mejor?

AP: La ciudad solía ser densa, solía tener tranvías increíbles, transporte público, y luego, lamentablemente, las ciudades, no solo Cincinnati sino en todo el país, vieron una disminución constante de la población, y una pérdida de residentes desplazados a los suburbios. Ahora las personas quieren regresar a la ciudad, pero tenemos el trabajo duro de deshacer lo que muchas ciudades intentaron hacer, que fue crear vecindarios de suburbios dentro de una ciudad para incentivar que la gente de los suburbios regrese. Se trata de deshacer un poco el pasado a la vez que nos concentramos en lo que supo existir.

AF: ¿Qué le preocupa más sobre este tipo de transiciones, y qué identifica como el problema principal que enfrentan las personas de ingresos bajos y comunidades de color en Cincinnati?

AP: Desplazamiento. Si no podemos ser una ciudad asequible para sus residentes, estos se irán, lo que es perjudicial en muchos aspectos. Si la ciudad no crece, una ciudad de nuestra magnitud y con nuestra ubicación dentro del país, entonces muere, muere rápido. Las ciudades de magnitudes como la nuestra tienen que crecer, y para que esto ocurra, no solo debemos reunir talento, sino también preservar a las familias y las comunidades antiguas que han estado aquí desde el primer momento..

Ninguna ciudad del país descubrió una forma de crecer sin desplazamiento. Los factores del mercado, los factores económicos son tan profundos y es tan difícil influir sobre estos, y los recursos de la ciudad son tan limitados, que es realmente difícil . . . A menudo, supongo que me frustro por no contar con suficientes recursos, suficiente autoridad para tener un impacto significativo en las fuerzas macroeconómicas que están ingresando a la ciudad. Ya que, si alcanzamos nuestro sueño, que es más inversión, más crecimiento, esto conllevará consecuencias negativas, y es realmente difícil de gestionar ambos..

AF: La página web de la alcaldía dice que Cincinnati está bien posicionada para ser líder en el cambio climático localmente y en el exterior. ¿Qué cree que la ciudad tiene para ofrecer que hace que se distinga en términos de acción climática?

AP: Todas nuestras iniciativas políticas se analizaron con dos lentes. El primer lente es el de la equidad racial y el segundo, el del clima. Esto se aplica a todo lo que hacemos, ya sea nuestra valuación de la silvicultura urbana, el análisis de un mapa de calor de nuestra ciudad o las inversiones en árboles no solo para limpiar el aire sino también para enfriar nuestros barrios, [o] nuestras inversiones en biocarbón. Somos una de las únicas tres ciudades en todo el mundo que recibieron un copioso subsidio por parte de Bloomberg Philanthropies para seguir innovando en el mundo del biocarbón, que es un subproducto de la quema de madera, que es un imán de carbono increíble que ayuda con la escorrentía de aguas pluviales a la vez que captura el carbono del aire.

Últimamente, las empresas y personas que miran hacia el futuro consideran al cambio climático en ese futuro. Si busca una ciudad que sea resiliente ante el cambio climático y además realice inversiones cuantiosas en tecnología climática, entonces Cincinnati es el destino indicado para usted.

Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines.

Imagen principal: Aftab Pureval. Crédito: Amanda Rossmann/USA Today Network.