public policy

Public Policy Conference on Water Abundance at Chapman University

New Geography — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 23:06:22 -0400

The specific aim for the hot topic of water abundance is to hold this one-day conference September, 15, 2022 hosting experts from industry, business, and academe to speak on the nuts and bolts of water shortages and the significant and real impact water issues have on our communities.

California policy makers seem to focus a great amount of energy on housing affordability and homelessness issues, which are extremely important, but forget to include related relevant and vital water issues. Lawns are shrinking as our ability to care for lawns and landscape declines due to water shortages, which are literally going down the toilet. Desalinization will likely increase and will be expensive to operate and the price of water will increase to unsustainable levels causing more and more Californians to consider moving to more affordable (and sane) states with better policies and practices. Water is probably the hottest and least understood issue affecting Californians now more than ever

Thursday September 15, 2022: 8:30AM - 5:00PM

Learn more and register

Feudal Future Podcast: The Impact of the Pandemic

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 18:41:49 -0400

On this episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Ross Elliott, Chairman of the Urban Land Institute of Australia, and Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Professor of Psychiatry at UC Irvine. This show covers the psychological impact of COVID-19 and how governments are managing it.

[3:15] The Nudge Unit

[8:25] Australia & Covid

[24:45] How to handle vaccines

[39:02] What should policy makers do now

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About our episode guests:

Ross Elliott is the co-founder of Suburban Futures (formerly The Suburban Alliance). He has 30 years’ experience in the property and urban development industry, including a number of national leadership roles for the Property Council of Australia as its Executive Director, then Chief Operating Officer and later as National Executive Director for the Residential Development Council. In this time he pioneered a number of policy initiatives for the industry on urban growth and cities policies for Australia. He has both authored and edited a number of monographs on urban development policy, housing and cities policies for Australia. Ross was also founding CEO of Brisbane Marketing, winning an International Downtown Association’s (USA) award for City Marketing in 2003. A frequent speaker, author and commentator on urban development policy, he was in 2016 invited to be international keynote speaker for the American Planning Association’s Utah conference and in 2017 was published in a global joint MIT/Chapman University project “Infinite Suburbia.”

Aaron Kheriaty is Professor of Psychiatry at UCI School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health. He serves as chairman of the medical ethics committees at UCI Hospital and at the CA Department of State Hospitals. Dr. Kheriaty graduated from the University of Notre Dame in philosophy and pre-medical sciences, earned his MD degree from Georgetown University, and completed residency training in psychiatry at UCI. He has authored books and articles for professional and lay audiences on bioethics, social science, psychiatry, and religion. His work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Public Discourse, and First Things; he has conducted print, radio, and television interviews on bioethics topics with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Fox, and NPR. On matters of public policy and healthcare he has addressed the California Medical Association and has testified before the California Senate Health Committee.

Learn more about Marshall Toplansky.
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Join the Beyond Feudalism Facebook group.
Read the Beyond Feudalism report.
Learn about Joel’s book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism.

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

The Unpopularity of Rule by Emergency Decree

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:34:49 -0400

As the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, state and local executives issued emergency orders to respond to this unprecedented health situation. This included orders shutting down businesses deemed non-essential, prohibiting social gatherings, putting evictions in abeyance, and even ordering people to stay in their homes.

I think most people understood that governors and mayors were trying to grapple with a highly unusual and uncertain situation and gave them the benefit of the doubt early on.

But as the pandemic went on, these leaders continued to rely almost exclusively on emergency orders to govern. A year and a half into the pandemic, we have in essence entered a system of rule by decree in America.

This was not necessary. Governors strategically decided against calling special sessions of their legislatures to deal with the pandemic. It’s likely the case that the legislators themselves probably did not want to have to take responsibility for pandemic actions, but nevertheless, the ordinary democratic process was largely sidelined.

When normal legislative sessions resumed, states such as Indiana and Ohio passed measures curtailing gubernatorial emergency powers and giving themselves a greater role in decision making. Both of these cases resulted in vetoes that were overridden and the governors are now suing to overturn the legislation.

The media class has been largely supportive of lockdown type measures. Hence there’s been little reporting on how unpopular gubernatorial rule by decree has been. In Indiana, for example, the Libertarian candidate for governor got more than double the level of support of any previous Libertarian candidate for statewide office, hitting double digits.

But the clearest example is Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a purple state that leans blue, so is hardly a bastion of conservative Republican control. The governor used vetoes to prevent limits from being put on his power. In response, the legislature bypassed him by putting a constitutional amendment to severely restrict the governor’s emergency powers on the ballot. It passed.

In Pennsylvania, the governor is now limited to a single, non-renewable 21-day emergency order period. Beyond that time, he must get legislative approval for emergency actions.

I think this shows the public is not on board with indefinite rule by decree, particularly with the very expansive powers claimed by executives to micromanage the behaviors of the public and businesses. Nor should they be. If the much maligned US Congress can manage to pass several coronavirus relief bills, there’s no reason state legislatures can’t pass laws as well.

Governors should have broad emergency authority to respond to unforeseen situations like the pandemic. But this should be strictly time limited. I personally think 21 days is too short. It would be better to have a limit of 30 days, renewable for an additional 15 day period. 45 days is plenty of time to convene the legislature to take action.

Even Hungary’s Viktor Orban had his pandemic related emergency powers ended earlier this years. There’s no reason for American governors and mayors should be able to use emergency powers to indefinitely rule by decree. It’s not democratic. And it’s also not popular.

This piece first appeared at Heartland Intelligence.

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century. He focuses on urban, economic development and infrastructure policy in the greater American Midwest. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets, and his work has appeared in many publications, including the The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Feudal Future Podcast — How COVID is Shifting Corporate Location Strategy with Jay Garner

Charlie Stephens — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 12:23:28 -0400

On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky welcome Jay Garner. Jay is CEO of Garner Economics as well as the Chair of the Site Selectors Guild. This episode explores the topic of site selection and how companies are choosing sites for their expansions. The group talks about how these types of decisions have been affected by the pandemic. Jay explains to listeners that the Site Selectors Guild are peer-selected location advisors that help facilitate location decisions of companies all over the world.

Joel asks Jay how site selection has changed during the pandemic. Jay explains that there was a pivot - He says, “...what we did pre-pandemic and what companies seem to be doing differently, with respect to different industry sectors - is changing significantly.” Jay explains information found in a survey or their membership that happened in April of 2020. About 49% of corporations surveyed said they were not continuing projects at that time. In June 2020, when the membership was surveyed again, there was an increase of global activity with companies moving forward with their projects. Another survey will be done in September.

Marshall talks about how he and Joel have researched future housing trends. He describes the trend of people moving out of expensive, big cities to more affordable and smaller cities. Marshall asks if Jay has seen a trend in projects in these areas. Jay explains that these were actually trends before the pandemic! Other than the price, another reason for this is that millennials are getting to the age where they want more space. He also says that public safety is very important to people.

The group talks about how remote work is affecting large companies. Jay talks specifically about remote work and productivity, cost, and how it is affecting employees’ creativity. Teamwork and creativity could be negatively affected by remote work. Jay says that long term, he thinks we will get back to working socially (depending on the status of therapeutics and a vaccine). The group talks about the potential changes in people after the pandemic.

Jay explains that most of his comments are his opinions, not necessarily that of the Site Selectors Guild.

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Building the Responsive City

Aaron M. Renn — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 13:47:58 -0500

The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data Smart Governance

by Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford

Technology, and especially the use of data and analytics, has been transforming the way cities manage service delivery. Former Indianapolis mayor New York City deputy mayor Steve Goldsmith, and his colleague at Harvard Susan Crawford, recently wrote a book called “The Responsive City” looking at this technology revolution. I recently read the book and posted some thoughts in a review posted at City Journal. Here’s an excerpt:

The book chronicles more than just technology’s potential; it also highlights what some local governments have already achieved with innovative approaches. After several fires resulted in the deaths of five people, New York City built a system to identify buildings at high fire risk, using predictive models and integrating data from multiple sources. City inspectors are now aggressively targeting those buildings for upgrades. To fight its rat problem, Chicago is using data analytics to predict where rats will gather, instead of waiting for resident complaints. Boston has developed a civic customer-relationship management system, with mobile-device apps, to link residents more easily with city services. Mimicking the way that Yelp collects restaurant reviews, Washington, D.C. uses a website to solicit ratings of city services. Cities around the country are adopting open-data portals.

…

Goldsmith and Crawford are candid about the challenges facing their responsive-city vision. Progressive-era reforms designed to eliminate corruption also curtailed government employees’ discretion, leaving them with narrowly defined roles and limited ability to respond effectively to real-world problems. Rigid job descriptions, such as “temporary full-time permanent intermittent police officer,” are common in cities like New York, which has more than 2,000 such classifications. Procurement rules require that detailed specifications be prepared in advance, unlike in the private sector, where technology and other solutions are often developed iteratively. Government’s rigid contracting processes make it tough to respond to findings during development.

You can click over to City Journal to read the entire thing

I also sat down with Steve Goldsmith recently to talk about the book, and some of the challenges and pitfalls of this technology-drive approach. If the audio embed doesn’t display for you, click over to listen on Soundcloud.