2024 Highlights and Season's Greetings

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As we wind down the year, we reflect on Penn IUR’s many activities and accomplishments in 2024 as well as the year ahead--our 20th!--which will bring more advancements in urban research, driving positive change and transformation to our cities. 

Here in the United States and worldwide, cities continued to grapple with urgent challenges, from the looming threat of climate change to housing affordability and supply issues to the sluggish recovery of downtowns following COVID-19. We are so thankful to you, our partners, and friends for joining us in exploring innovative solutions.

We began 2024 by inviting Expert Voices from our network to weigh in on the impacts of remote work. We continued to probe this theme in “Doom Loop or Boom Loop: Work from Home and the Challenges Facing America's Big Cities,” a paper Co-Director Susan Wachter co-authored in partnership with the Volcker Alliance. 

Penn IUR Fellow Bill Glasgall of Volcker and Susan continued the discussion in our monthly event series and podcast, Special Briefing. Besides the Doom Loop, the series explored hot growth states, state tax cuts, and America’s $900 Billion Water Crisis. This fall, Special Briefing began focusing on the impacts of the election on states and municipalities, a theme that will continue well into the new year with a new administration.

On the global side, we can report much progress in addressing climate change. Mayor Anne Hildalgo of Paris, France again hosted the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, whose secretariat is hosted at Penn IUR, in Paris just ahead of the Olympics. Out of the commission's recommendations came our report on The Green Cities Guarantee Fund: Unlocking Access to Urban Climate Finance, led by Penn IUR Co-Director Eugénie Birch and Mauricio Rodas, Penn IUR Fellow and former mayor of Quito. Promoted in venues from New York Climate Week to the World Urban Forum in Cairo to COP29 and U20 in Rio de Janeiro, the concept of the Green Cities Guarantee Fund is gaining visibility—and momentum.

Meanwhile, our activities around financing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in urban areas are also accelerating. Led by Amanda Lloyd with Genie Birch and Sam Geldin, PhD ‘ 22, From Grey to Green: Better Data to Finance Nature in Cities, our second report developed with the United Nations Environment Programme, was announced at the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia. It offers cities guidance on integrating NbS solutions into their fiscal and strategic planning. Amanda also presented the work at the World Urban Forum, Cairo, Eqypt. 

An associated project, Urban Innovation, undertaken in conjunction with the Guangzhou Institute for Urban Innovation, also yielded a second report, Civitas Novus: The Penn IUR Guangzhou Urban Innovation Assessment, unveiled at the World Urban Forum, Cairo, Egypt with Genie Birch taking part in the event. Previous to its unveiling, the Penn IUR team, led by Amanda, tested the tool, a methodology that empowers cities to evaluate their public innovation ecosystem, in a two-day workshop in Kocaeli, Turkey.

Along the way, we celebrated urban leaders who are implementing innovative solutions for urban resilience, recognizing them at Penn IUR's Leadership Forum with the 2024 Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Award: Andrew Melnik, former International Projects Manager, City of Bucha, Region of Kyiv, Ukraine; Jaime Alberto Pumarejo Heins, former Mayor, City of Barranquilla, Colombia; and Lauren Sorkin, Executive Director, Resilient Cities Network.

This fall, we also welcomed our seventh cohort into the Fellows in Urban Leadership program. This year's remarkable group of undergraduates has already met to discuss politics, social justice, regional planning, sustainability and recycling, and the impact of public spaces in our cities. In the new year, they will continue to explore topics such as public health, real estate, and the energy transition.

Finally, we officially began celebrating Penn IUR’s 20th anniversary—a celebration we will carry through 2025. To mark the occasion, we launched our Scholarly Voices series, highlighting noteworthy urban research from scholars like the incomparable Gilles Duranton, Dennis Culhane, and Laura Perna, with more to come. We hope you will join us in celebrating 20 years of urban research and in continuing important conversations in what is sure to be an interesting year. 

Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year!

Sincerely,

Eugénie Birch and Susan Wachter

Co-Directors, Penn IUR

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2024 Year in Review reel by Penn IUR