Back when he was in college, Bruce Katz says, the big movie was Blade Runner with its theme of apocalyptic escape from the city. Decades later in the 90’s, he observes, “the most popular T.V. shows were Sex in the City, Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier. [Shows] that characterized cities as hip and cool places to live. It was a 180 degree turn.”
It’s a trend that has only gained force, and that’s good news indeed for Katz, an urban policy expert who has spent his career shaping ground-breaking yet reasonable strategies to revitalize cities.
“The art of policy is to build places that are livable and distinct and special,” Katz said during an October appearance in Pittsburgh to accept the 2006 Heinz Award for Public Policy. Cities need to maximize the potential of people as well, he said.
Katz, the founder of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, received the Heinz Award for his relentless work to advance innovative housing and transportation projects, sustainable development practices, green space preservation, better schools, good jobs, and other policies that make cities more vibrant places to live and work.
At a time when the suburbanization of America was in full steam, a young and trend-bucking Bruce Katz was growing up in Brooklyn, New York. The urban setting would serve him well, giving him a passion for cities and shaping a career path that would lead to a position as senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and to his current position with Brookings.
“Perhaps better than anyone, Bruce Katz understands the importance of thriving urban centers in America,” said Teresa Heinz, chairman of the Heinz Family Foundation, which bestows the annual awards in honor of the late Senator John Heinz.
Vibrant cities are the lifeblood of prosperous economies. But “through the last half-century, many older cities and suburbs have withered as resources were poured into new developments, which have sprawled across the rural landscape and, in doing so, harmed the natural environment and isolated communities from one another,” Heinz said.
To combat sprawl and a multitude of other sins committed against cities over the years, Katz argues for sweeping reform.
“Our policies need to change. We’ve made progress in fits and starts,” he notes, citing the successful demolition of elevated freeways along waterfronts and failed public high-rise housing built in the 50’s. Katz was the architect of Hope VI, a federal program to demolish and redevelop public housing.
But even as we begin to make progress undoing the misguided policies of the past, “for the most part federal and state policies still tend to have a fairly significant suburban and exurban tilt and they haven’t been revised to reflect the new competitive potential of cities," Katz said.
"The whole country to some extent is paying a price for this not just economically but also environmentally,” he added. “We have a long way to go.”
And as go the cities, he suggests, so goes the country.
The Vital Center
The day after accepting the Heinz Award, Katz continued his body of award-winning work with a trip to Detroit where he participated in the Great Lakes Economic Initiative, a regional effort to set a modern policy agenda that supports renewed economic growth in the rapidly deindustrializing Midwest states.
Katz tapped John Austin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, to head the effort from his home base at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“Bruce saw, as I did, the opportunity to develop solid economic analysis and policy recommendations to inform the agendas of the region's governors, Congressional delegation and, in particular, to provoke attention to the real economic needs of the region during the run-up to the 2008 Presidential elections,” Austin said.
In October, the Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program released a 40-plus page report outlining a series of economic, environmental, and social policy recommendations designed to "fuel the economic engines" of the greater Great Lakes region. The report, titled A Vital Center, called on state and federal policy makers to:
- Cultivate the region's latent human capital with pioneering programs such as a 'common marketplace' for education and employment opportunities that focus on producing entrepreneurs and highly skilled workers.
- Restart the region's economic engine by stimulating R&D investment in high tech industries; pursuing emerging sectors such as alternative energy, green technology, and next generation transportation systems; and restoring Great Lakes waterways.
- Update the region's social compact by modernizing health care plans, pension programs, and employment services.
- Rebuild decayed central cities, the innovation hubs of the new economy, with targeted investments in high speed transit, new water and sewer infrastructure, and urban redevelopment projects.
"The time is now," the report states, "for Great Lakes leaders to articulate a meaningful agenda for what the states of the region and federal government can do together to ensure that this economic giant steps in the right direction."
"The region can lead again by reanimating the attitudes and practices that made it great," the report concludes.
The agenda already has begun to shape the policy discussion in states like Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin – likely key battlegrounds in the 2008 presidential election – and its success is largely due to the leadership of Bruce Katz, according to John Austin.
Seismic Changes
The Vital Center project may target communities in the Great Lakes region. But Katz is best known for his extensive work to improve cities, any city.
“The idea that I most focus on is that cities matter and the country is going through enormous demographic, economical and cultural change,” Katz said. “All the changes put together revalue cities. We’ve tended to treat cities as anachronistic places that were built for a different era and different kind of economy. As we move more toward the knowledge economy, we see that cities have an enormous economic and fiscal value.”
Katz credits young people for the modest swing in thinking about cities among senior policy makers.
“Most importantly there’s a shift among young people because the attitudes of cities have changed among youth,” Katz said. And while cities have become cool again, some – like Portland, OR – remain cooler than others. “In terms of smart growth, where there’s more reinvestment to the city and less sprawl, Portland is the poster child of smart growth in the U.S.,” Katz said.
The key to its success? Continued growth at the edges and a whole set of policies designed and targeted specifically to stimulate reinvestment in the central city.
“Very few places have gone that route," Katz said.
Less Sprawl, More Growth
As an example of his advocacy, Katz called for a citywide approach to reclaiming vacant lots in an October 2002 paper. The report, titled Seizing City Assets: Ten Steps to Urban Land Reform, cites several examples of development that breathe new life into cities instead of fueling growth in the exurbs.
“Sprawl,” Katz said, “is unconscionable for environmental and other reasons.” Pointing to the “classic lag between change on the ground and policy change”, he argues for greater acceleration of reform particularly at the federal and state levels.
But the time may be right for a change in direction. “We’re on the verge of big changes,” Katz said, naming a bipartisan list of recently elected officials – Eliot Spitzer in New York and Virginia Governor Tim Kean among them – who made urban reinvestment a centerpiece of their campaigns.
"If they’ve been mayors, all the better,” Katz said. “Those who have been mayors are a step ahead of the game. Mayors just intuitively understand the value of cities and adjust policies.”
Successful cities today and in the future require more density, transit, and mixed use to be successful, said Katz, who predicts American cities will look more like European cities in the next 50 to 75 years. European cities, he points out, also experienced industrial shocks in the 70’s and the 80’s just like Grand Rapids and Detroit in recent years.
On the upside, these cities have generally revived quicker and sprawled less, containing growth by investing heavily in waterfronts and mass transit to guide development in a more sustainable fashion.
“Environmental issues are going to reward denser, smarter, more environmentally-friendly urban and metropolitan development,” he said.
Photos:
Bruce Katz - photo copyright Jim Harrison
Heinz Awards - photo copyright Rocky Raco
John Austin - photo copyright Peter Schottenfels
Campau Commons, part of Hope VI in Grand Rapids - photo copyright Brian Kelly
Townhomes in Madison Square - Photo copyright Brian Kelly