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.”

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.

With a background in landscape architecture, Seung Kyum Kim has always been interested in the interplay between green space and the urban form.

After beginning his career at Design Workshop in Phoenix and Salt Lake City in the late 2000s, Kim relocated to South Korea in 2009 to take a role with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, working on flood mitigation, drought, and stormwater management. There, he got interested in “how to minimize risk from flooding, natural disasters, and climate change,” he says, which led him to pursue a master’s and a PhD from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

While at Harvard GSD, Kim joined a trip to several cities in China with Professor Richard Peiser and discovered he had an interest in housing and land policy as well. Since then, his research—which included work as an International Fellow through the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s China program in 2021—has spanned multiple disciplines, connecting urban planning, landscape architecture, housing and economics, environmental justice, and climate change.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Kim reflects on some of the most successful climate-adaptive green spaces around the world, why cities with aging residents are less likely to invest in new green spaces, and how park usage differs in the United States and South Korea.

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

SEUNG KYUM KIM: I’m currently a professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology [KAIST], which is very much focused on technology and science. The engineering school is very strong here, it’s like MIT in South Korea. My department is the Graduate School of Future Strategy, and I’m working on the economic side, urban planning and climate change, while some of the professors in our department are working on the engineering side.

I’m working on six research projects at the same time, so my field of research is kind of expanding, rather than going deep. I’m focusing on how climate policies like carbon taxes and the CBAM, or carbon border adjustment mechanism, influence the urban economy, particularly manufacturing competitiveness and urban inequality. I’m also exploring the long-term impact that these policies have on shrinking cities and urban revitalization.

One of my projects is on how blue-green infrastructure for climate change adaptation affects gentrification in urban areas in 32 countries on the African continent. And in one of my recent research papers, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, I was researching how an aging population impacts climate policy.

JG: What’s something that was surprising or unintuitive that you found in your research?

SK: I studied how the aging population impacts climate adaptation strategy in Southeast Asia. Using remote sensing and difference-in-differences approaches, I found that communities with a growing elderly population were seeing reduced green infrastructure and green spaces, making them more vulnerable to climate change. This was sort of surprising, and it underscored the importance of considering demographic change in climate policy planning.

As people get older in a community, the tax base decreases. So with a limited budget, the government’s priorities are different. As the people are getting older, the government mostly focuses on hospitals, the health budget is increased—but for environmental green space and parks, investments in those kinds of amenities, the budget is reduced.

JG: What do you wish more people knew about urban green spaces?

SK: I wish people understood that climate policy isn’t just an environmental concern. It is deeply connected to economic and social equality. Effective urban planning can simultaneously address environmental, economic, and social issues as well.

JG: You’ve studied green spaces all over the world. Are there any great projects that you think were particularly successful at combining green space and climate adaptation?

SK: There are a few inspiring examples of successful green space projects that also address climate change and provide cultural benefits. There’s the Cheonggyecheon Stream restoration in South Korea, this was 15 or 20 years ago. Originally it was a covered highway, and the Cheonggyecheon was restored into an urban stream and linear park in central Seoul. It significantly reduced urban heat island effects, improved air quality, boosted biodiversity, and provided the poor with an urban oasis in the densest area of the city.

One of the reasons they did not convert the covered highway into a stream and green space earlier was that land prices are very expensive in central Seoul, and because of traffic issues, transportation issues. So there were two phases. Before the Cheonggyecheon restoration project, they actually modified the transportation systems within Seoul. . . . The local government created a dedicated bus lane in the center of the road to solve the traffic conditions. After that, they did the stream restoration. So that kind of environmental project is not solely a green space project, it’s linked. That’s one of the reasons we need to see the broader perspective. We need to see the transportation and climate change and environmental benefits and the cultural benefits within urban issues.

China also has the sponge city initiative in various cities, including Wuhan and Xinjiang. It aims to incorporate permeable surfaces, wetlands, green roofs, and rain gardens throughout the urban area. The [sponge city] project improves urban water management to reduce flooding and runoff and enhance the urban ecosystem, making the city more resilient to extreme weather events.

JG: Have you noticed any differences in the ways we use or don’t use urban green space in the United States compared to South Korea?

SK: In the United States, green space often means larger parks . . . nature reserves and recreational areas that are generously spread out, especially in suburban or less dense urban areas. Expansive parks like Central Park in New York or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, they’re intended not only for recreation but also for preserving nature and wildlife within an urban context.

But in Korea, the green spaces are usually smaller—it’s a small country, so they’re more strategically placed within dense urban neighborhoods because of limited urban land availability. The parks tend to be compact and highly designed to maximize efficiency, often equipped with walking paths, exercise equipment, benches, and community gardens. Also, in Korea green space focuses heavily on accessibility, daily convenience, and the well-being of residents fitting seamlessly into the high-density urban environment. Another difference is cultural usage. Korean parks often serve as a community space for daily activities, like group exercise and community gatherings, whereas US parks might see more individual, family-based recreational uses, like picnics and sports and leisure activities.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or a favorite TV show you’ve been streaming?  

SK: Recently I read Elizabeth Kolbert’s Under a White Sky, which vividly explores how environmental innovations can sometimes have unexpected consequences. Another book I read recently was Ian Goldin’s Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World. That was also fascinating, especially how it highlights the factors determining urban success or failure.

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

Lead image: Former Lincoln Institute International Fellow Seung Kyum Kim. Credit: Courtesy photo.