Jeremy Nowak

Vice President & Director Bruce Katz

Finding local solutions when the nation cannot, or will not With the rise of the politics of populism in the United States and much of Europe, how can openness and diversity survive? The answer, according to urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak, lies within communities around the country that have been creating their own solutions to the problems of modern postindustrial societies. While the United States has struggled unsuccessfully, as a nation, with such systemic problems as decaying infrastructure and rising income inequality, cities in both -red- and -blue- states have found their own innovative solutions. Even amid the angry populism of the 2016 election, for example, voters in Columbus, Los Angeles, and Seattle alone approved $180 billion in additional local taxes to spur ambitious transit and more sustainable patterns of development. Solving problems at the local level is not only more practical than wishing for national solutions, it can produce better results through a more democratic process, the authors argue. When decisions are made closer to home, voters tend to become more engaged in the process and thus more invested in the outcome. And public resources can be marshaled more efficiently when they are aligned with local market demands. This book cites many positive examples of how cities across the United States have taken the lead in dealing creatively with their local problems--even while the national government too often was gripped in partisan gridlock. The authors call for a twenty-first century localism, one attuned to the needs of all citizens, which has the potential to be not just a reaction but also an antidote to the rise of populism and nationalism across the world.

How Cities Can Triumph in the Age of Populism

The New Localism

Bruce Katz

The New Localism provides a roadmap for change that starts in the communities where most people live and work. 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. New localism is not a replacement for the vital roles federal governments play; it is the ideal complement to an effective federal government, and, currently, an urgently needed remedy for national dysfunction. In The New Localism, Katz and Nowak tell the stories of the cities that are on the vanguard of problem solving. Pittsburgh is catalyzing inclusive growth by inventing and deploying new industries and technologies. Indianapolis is governing its city and metropolis through a network of public, private and civic leaders. Copenhagen is using publicly owned assets like their waterfront to spur large scale redevelopment and finance infrastructure from land sales. Out of these stories emerge new norms of growth, governance, and finance and a path toward a more prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive society. Katz and Nowak imagine a world in which urban institutions finance the future through smart investments in innovation, infrastructure and children and urban intermediaries take solutions created in one city and adapt and tailor them to other cities with speed and precision. As Katz and Nowak show us in The New Localism, “Power now belongs to the problem solvers.”

Jeremy Nowak

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