If you’ve ever wondered why some city governments elaborate their own greenhouse-gas-reduction strategies – when it might seem odd to spend scarce resources fighting a global problem in exchange for such minor potential improvements in local environmental quality – then you may find much useful insight from Joan Fitzgerald’s Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development
An urban planner at Northeastern University, Fitzgerald traces the reasoning that leads cities to conclude that they can extract economic- and job-development benefits by positioning themselves as leaders in the new “green” industry sectors. These are the industries that draw their economic relevance from the reality of long-term trends in energy pricing and from the moral commitment of sufficiently well-off populations to lead more sustainable lives.
This book systematically explores the crossover between four aspects of sustainability – renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste management, and transportation – and three economic-development strategies that Fitzgerald calls “linking” (connecting populations to new employment opportunities based); “transformational” (taking hard-hit local manufacturing industries into new markets); and “leapfrogging” (building entirely new technology clusters).
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As he prepares his 2010 state of the state and FY 2011 budget messages, President Obama is widely said to be leaning toward outsourcing to commercial firms some of NASA’s mid-term launch operations (such as resupply of the International Space Station, or even other exploratory ventures).
For intelligent discussion of the options the President has been exploring since late 2009, see the report of the Augustine Commission (formally known as the Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee). While not as cheap as the “base case” in-house programs, commercial operations stand a better chance of actually achieving interesting goals and inspiring ordinary Americans, so look for them in these documents, I’d say. I’ll update this post when we know if I’m right. UPDATE (1/24/10): WSJ says it’s going to happen.
A decision to go commercial would mean canceling or scaling back dramatically in-house development programs like the Ares I rocket, and that’s bad news for states that host associated NASA Centers or NASA’s prime contractors that tend to hang their hats nearby. UPDATE 2 (2/1/10): Yep, it’s official. From NASA budget press conference: Ares canceled. Still pretty modest expenditures on commercial launches but realistically now there’s no alternative for low earth orbit.
However, it could be good news for those states where the new generation of new and nimble commercial operators intend to exploit the “airmail” or “internet” models under which government contracts build an entirely new technology-based industry aimed at commercial customers.
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Good grief. Now even the Kauffman Foundation can’t keep its mitts off Bayh-Dole, which — whatever the deficiencies of university TTOs, and I concede many — has been reasonably successful as overall federal policy. I’m going to think about this, but I definitely have some reservations about the foundation’s idea. It seems like the legal “agency” problems would be very severe and difficult to sort out. Maybe we need to see the specific statutory language they have in mind. Comment from lawyer friends? UPDATE (1/19): Ominously, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke lines up behind Kauffman and announces plans to convene the nation’s universities to talk about their contributions to economic development (not a bad idea, on the whole). One can already detect the discomfort on the AUTM web page.
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Manhattanville: the implications for economic development
The Center for an Urban Future, with which I have been affiliated as an advisor and author for many years, has published as the most recent number in its “Off the CUF” series of commentaries my thoughts on the implications of Columbia University’s Manhattanville campus project.
While the legal issues swirling around Manhattanville are up in the air as of the publication date, I have tried to focus on the policy implications, and how it happened that we all took our eye off the ball: the potential of this expansion to enable cluster formation and private-sector employment. At the risk of irritating both sides in this contentious process, I am asking that City leaders explicitly re-open the question of private-sector research partners of the university and whether they will be recruited and made welcome either in the project itself or in immediately adjoining land scheduled for rezoning by City Council this spring.
On Manhattanville, it’s time to lead toward the outcomes NYC wants, and time to stop cowering behind fear that any new complexity will complicate a fraught political process. I expect this piece to be controversial. Comments welcome. Click the link in the first paragraph for the article, or see it embedded in a frame after the jump.
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