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Amazon in Seattle: The Role of Business in Causing and Solving a Housing Crisis

In 2020, Amazon partnered with a nonprofit called Mary’s Place and used some of its own resources to build a shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its campus in Seattle. Yet critics argued that Amazon’s apparent charity was misplaced and that the company was actually making the problem worse. Paul Healy and Debora Spar explore the role business plays in addressing unhoused communities in the case “Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary’s Place.”

When Climate Goals, Housing Policy, and Corporate R&D Collide, Social Good Can Emerge

Grants designed to improve housing can make homes more energy efficient and save money for low-income families, providing a powerful way to confront climate change, says research by Omar Asensio. What do the findings mean for companies trying to scale innovation?

Would You Live in a Smart City Where Government Controls Privacy?

Toronto is experimenting with smart-city concepts envisioned by Google spinoff Sidewalk Labs. Leslie John and Mitch Weiss discuss the tradeoffs of using technology to improve modern city life. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How to Know If Your Neighborhood Is Being Gentrified

Using modern digital tools, Michael Luca and colleagues hope to give urban planners a look into gentrification as it is happening. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Why JPMorgan Chase Is Investing Millions in Detroit

JPMorgan Chase is making extensive investments into the revitalization of Detroit. What does it expect in return? Professor Joseph Bower and JP Morgan executive Peter Scher discuss the challenges and rewards of partnering with cities in this podcast. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Smart Cities are Complicated and Costly: Here's How to Build Them

When governments take on a smart city project, it's often the private sector that's left to execute the vision—sometimes at the expense of good public policy. John Macomber proposes a roadmap that considers situation, solution, and sovereignty. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Who is Responsible for the Future of Cities?

As technological innovations continue to transform urban growth, many believe the private sector should lead the future of cities—and that government regulators should follow its lead. But in a recent cross-disciplinary panel at Harvard, not everyone agreed. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Researchers Use Google Street View to See the Future of Cities

Scott Duke Kominers, Nikhil Naik, and colleagues use Google Street View to show how cities are changing and help them improve over time. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Urbanization with Chinese Characteristics? China’s Gamble for Modernization

If the Chinese Communist Party has its way in the coming decades, it will urbanize hundreds of millions of people, transform agriculture, and sustain economic growth--all without political instability. This paper details the risks and opportunities of China’s new-style urbanization reforms, arguing that proposals for urbanization and economic transformation are not a radical departure from the institutions that have structured Chinese society for the last 30 years.

Land Institutions and Chinese Political Economy: Institutional Complementarities and Macroeconomic Management

This paper shows the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used land as a policy tool. CCP leaders intentionally reorganized fiscal, financial, and land institutions to put land at the center of local government finances in the mid-1990s. Since the late 1990s, the CCP has used the land supply as a key tool of macroeconomic expansion and contraction. Local officials act as agents of the center: pursuing land development when pushed to so do by central authorities concerned about managing economic growth.

Big Data and Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life

Michael Luca, Scott Duke Kominers and colleagues describe a number of new urban data sources and illustrate how they can be used to improve the study and function of cities.