Editor’s Note: Urban Wheels Keep on Turning

With American federal lawmakers up to their eyes in gridlock time and time again, cities, we have been told, are bringing sexy back to public policy with their ability to be “centers,” “ecosystems,” and “hubs” of innovation.

Although overuse may have calcified the concept of “cities as innovators” into a cliché, it does speak to a greater truth about urban policy. From the romantic notion of skyscrapers soaring into the air to the mundane challenge of where an island of people is supposed to put its trash, outside-of-the-box ideas are often what guides policies in metropolitan areas.

Amid the bike shares, pedestrian plazas, micro-apartments, and tech campus programs, actions geared toward innovation, like any other policy decision, may generate unintended consequences. For instance, San Francisco’s recent tech boom has been accompanied with an increase in rent rates and homelessness.

Keeping this in mind, this week, the Urban Affairs team at the Chicago Policy Review will be diving deep into the underbelly of urban innovation to ask:

Are urban planners unintentionally pushing families out of cities?

Does the size of a city have anything to do with wage inequality?

Are efforts to eradicate slums in the developing world actually sustaining them?

How does a policymaker measure the well-being of city residents? Is residential mobility a neglected yardstick?

In addition, a podcast conversation with Yonah Freemark from the Metropolitan Planning Council that touches on transportation and land use planning will conclude the series.

Questions, like the ones above, are only the tip of the iceberg that face urban policy. As researchers and policymakers alike continue to grapple with how policy can best achieve progress in cities, we hope that this series might help a bit in turning some of the wheels.

Feature Photo: cc/(Theen Moy)