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“In their new book, The New Localism, urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak reveal where the real power to create change lies and how it can be used to address our most serious social, economic, and environmental challenges.
Power is shifting in the world: downward from national governments and states to cities and metropolitan communities; horizontally from the public sector to networks of public, private and civic actors; and globally along circuits of capital, trade, and innovation.
This new locus of power — this new localism — is emerging by necessity to solve the grand challenges characteristic of modern societies: economic competitiveness, social inclusion and opportunity; a renewed public life; the challenge of diversity; and the imperative of environmental sustainability. Where rising populism on the right and the left exploits the grievances of those left behind in the global economy, new localism has developed as a mechanism to address them head on.”
“In our latest City Accelerator guide, ‘Resilience, Equity, and Innovation,’ we share the tools and processes four cities, Pittsburgh, Saint Paul, San Francisco and Washington D.C., explored in an effort to increase equity and fund infrastructure. With new approaches to managing public resources, these cities…
“It’s still early days for governments experimenting with pay-for-success (PFS) projects, in which governments ask private funders to foot the bill for social programs, and then agree to repay those funders if the programs achieve agreed-on results. As public budgets tighten and social challenges remain…
“From climate change to terrorism, the difficulties confronting policy makers are unprecedented in their variety, but also in their complexity. Our existing policy tool kit seems stale and outdated. Increasingly, it is clear, we need not only new solutions but also new methods for arriving…
“To mitigate negative impacts and anticipate opportunities arising from high levels of global migration, we need a better understanding of the various factors contributing to the international movement of people and how they work together. Data—specifically, the widely dispersed data sets that exist across governments,…
“Social impact bonds—also known as ‘pay-for-success’ contracts, since they are not true bonds, but rather performance-based contracts—aim to help governments experiment with new ways of providing social services. The basic concept is this: Private investors provide the original funding, and the government only pays if…
“This article explores the prospect and practice of alternative and more collaborative approaches to environmental governance, focusing on recent North American experience and with particular attention to: (i) characteristic barriers to effective and collaborative environmental governance; (ii) approaches to collaboration and bridging between actors and…
“This article uses a formal systematic review to examine the extent to which literature discussing collaborative approaches to water governance reflects understanding and awareness of power-related considerations. It makes the case that an analytical approach grounded in theory on power can facilitate assessment of the…
“Traditionally, statutory regulation was viewed as the primary mechanism for achieving environmental and social change. Its uniform system and top down implementation was expected to engineer social and environmental change at every location. However, this vision never constituted an entirely satisfactory empirical account of the…
“This article claims that there is a need for a new form of innovation in the public sector because bureaucratic (closed) ways of innovating do not yield the quantity and quality of innovations necessary to solve emergent and persistent policy challenges. Based on these shortcomings…
“This chapter can be found in Innovations in Public Leadership Development. ‘This is the best single-source guide to leadership development in the public sector. It offers a wealth of advice for teachers, students, trainers, human resource officers, and established leaders. The all-original chapters include discussions…