(co-authored with Florian Schalliol)

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” So famously said Bette Davis’ character in the classic 1950 movie All About Eve.  Replace “night” with “four years” and we just begin to have a sense of what Tuesday’s election means for the world and our nation.

The election of Donald Trump and the return of one-party rule to Congress has once again ushered in a period of volatility and uncertainty for US cities and metropolitan areas, the places that house the bulk of our population, generate the preponderance of our GDP and drive the accelerating pace of technological innovation.

As exemplified by Trump’s early Cabinet appointments, these globally significant places are about to experience an unprecedented set of shocks, some aired during the election, many not. To withstand what’s coming, and even take advantage of the disruption, cities and metropolitan areas, individually and collectively, will need to organize themselves in equally unprecedented ways.

Getting organized will require investing time and local resources into critical sectors likely to be under-emphasized by the federal government (such as housing, workforce, neighborhoods, and technological innovation) and re-embracing the very things that make communities resilient (using their economic might, leveraging local loyalties and networks, integrating ideas and delivering projects with real results). Building on the anger and dissatisfaction visibly expressed in this election, this ground-up movement must tangibly lift up people and places left behind.

Cities and metropolitan areas can – and indeed, they must – create meaningful change. DOT Secretary and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg has already called for a local government “salvation” in the coming years. We argue for a broader interpretation of “local” power; thriving during this period will necessitate cities and metros to realize the full potential of New Localism.

The Power of America(n Cities) and New Localism

The election took place a mere week after the Economist published a special report on the state of the US economy. Entitled The Envy of the World, the report marveled at our economy’s extraordinary long-run performance.

“In 1990, [the United States] accounted for about two-fifths of the GDP of the G7. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan – gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990. Mississippi may be America’s poorest state, but its hard-working residents earn, on average, more than Brits, Canadians or Germans. Lately, China too has gone backwards. Having closed in rapidly on America in the years before the pandemic, its nominal GDP has slipped from about three-quarters of America’s in 2021 to two-thirds today.”

Th

“Power increasingly belongs to the problem solvers. And these problem solvers now congregate disproportionately at the local level, in cities and metropolitan areas across the globe.”

The book’s contention rested on the following:

联合国

In the end, national governments do not build one home, educate one child, skill one worker, manufacture one product, repair one road or bring an idea to market. Places are where the work of a nation actually gets done. And the act of doing spawns more innovation.

The 2024 Elections

埃尔

The outsized scale and size of investments related to national security will continue to offer opportunities for job growth and technological innovation for those places that seize the defense divided.

The accelerated pace of technological change (e.g., artificial intelligence, robotics, additive manufacturing and genomics) will upheave sectors, clusters, companies and work in ways predictable and unpredictable.

Continued geo-political tensions will alter the exchange of goods, services and ideas, particularly in advanced elements of the economy.

The raison d’etre of downtowns, and the tax revenues that these central business districts generate, will continue to be fundamentally disrupted by the pandemic’s cementing of hybrid and remote work.

These macro forces make New Localism even more important now than it was in 2016. In short, the world is smaller. Nationalism is on the rise; globalism is on the decline. Re-shoring, near-shoring and friend shoring are realities of the new order. Supply chains and the flows of capital, critical minerals and advanced technologies are fundamentally altered. This is a new game of multi-level chess, complex, disorienting and burdened with risk.

Where Now?

Wi

1. Identify your Niche

作为

2. Invest Where the Feds Pull Back

作为

3. Learn to Harness Private and Philanthropic Capital

Th

4. Activate Broader Networks

Mastering this period will require new kinds of governance, within and across cities and metropolitan areas. The “command and control” style of governance no longer aligns with the pace of economic change and the volatility of politics. Rather the distributed leadership models advanced by Deborah Arcona, Kate Isaacs and other colleagues at MIT Sloan School of Management are now ready for large scale adoption and adaptation. Under these “cultivate-and-coordinate” models, business and civic leadership groups (which are plentiful in the US) can rally behind a broader network of for profit and nonprofit entrepreneurs who have “…passion, expertise, a deep network of relationships, internal credibility, and ready-to-go projects….” Capital is often not the binding constraint; organizing networks is the challenge.

5. Leverage Collective Market Power

在

Looking Ahead

Th

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University. Florian Schalliol is the Founder of Metis Impact, a boutique consulting firm.