Annual Report
Sustainable Urban Futures: 2023-2024 Penn IUR Annual Report
October 16, 2024
Sustainable Urban Futures: 2023-2024 Annual Report
A Message from Penn IUR’s Co-Directors and Advisory Board Chair
Penn IUR bridges research, policy, and practice to fulfill its mission of furthering our collective understanding of cities, their role in shaping the world, and their ability to contribute to a sustainable future for all. Through its domestic and international programs, Penn IUR engages scholars, policymakers, practitioners, students, and the public. Its impact is due in great part to Penn IUR’s collaboration with many partners across Penn’s campus and around the globe.
This past year, Penn IUR’s U.S. research focused on housing, the post-COVID economy, and climate change. Research projects, convenings, and publications explored the challenges and the solutions for increasing affordable housing; local zoning restrictions and their effect on the cost of housing; the economic impact of remote work; and risk dynamics of flooding on the housing ecosystem, including lenders, homeowners, and insurers.
Penn IUR’s international work looked at financing urban climate resilience and assessing urban innovation. Penn IUR’s ongoing City Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Finance Initiative (C2IFI) identified gaps in funding for urban nature-based solutions (NbS) and helped launch and support the 80-member Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Global Commission for Urban Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Finance, co-chaired by Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris; Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio de Janeiro; and Jeffrey Sachs, economist and SDSN president. The latter project included the conceptual development of a Green Cities Guarantee Fund, aligning city interests within the reform of the world’s multilateral development banks, and contributed key messages for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) upcoming special report on cities. In addition, Penn IUR worked with the Guangzhou Institute for Urban Innovation to craft and test an urban innovation assessment tool and contributed to Harnessing Urban Innovation to Unlock the Sustainable Development Goals published this year by Springer Nature.
Penn IUR’s publication program disseminates its research and that of its network of Penn IUR affiliated scholars through various outlets. This year, Penn IUR worked with Penn Press to publish three monographs in The City in the 21st Century series including former Bogotá (Colombia) mayor Enrique Peñalosa Londoño’s much-anticipated Equality and the City: Urban Innovations for All Citizens. Penn IUR’s monthly Urban Link offered readers current insights from Penn IUR Faculty Fellows and Scholars. The Urban Research eJournal, published in conjunction with the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), now is a repository of more than 9,000 urban-focused papers that have been downloaded some 1.6 million times.
This year, Penn IUR’s convening schedule covered a wide range of subjects. The Special Briefing on the Fiscal Outlook of State and Local Governments, a monthly live virtual discussion and an associated podcast, covered such timely topics as “Rolling Out the $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act—What’s Being Built and What’s in the Pipeline” featuring U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and “America’s $900 Billion Water Crisis” with Penn’s own Howard Nuekrug. Penn IUR and the Volcker Alliance partner on this series that reached more than 10,000 viewers/listeners this year. Penn IUR’s ongoing in-person and virtual expert meetings on pressing urban issues included 17 events discussing, for example, “AI in the City,” “Powering the Slum: Exploring Alternatives Forms of Energy for Informal Settlements,” and “Economic Opportunity for Everyone: The Role of CDFIs in Advancing and Building Opportunity.”
Penn IUR’s student programming attracts young urbanists and scholars from Penn’s undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs. In Fall, 2023 Penn IUR had a special opportunity to co-sponsor a graduate course, Topics in International Development: Reconstruction of Small Cities in Ukraine, with the Department of City & Regional Planning and the Diplomacy Lab, U.S. Department of State. The students’ work resulted in a plan for the reconstruction of Bucha, Ukraine, a war-torn site 15 kilometers from Kyiv. They presented the work at the Biden Center, Washington, D.C., to an audience that included Oksana Markarova, the Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States, and officials from the departments of State and Housing and Urban Development. During the year, the Penn IUR Fellows in Urban Leadership traveled to New York and Washington, D.C. to meet with key public and private decision-makers in those cities. Urban-focused PhD students from several Penn schools shared their research in regular meetings.
As we introduce the work of Penn IUR’s 19th year, we wish to thank the many people on whose support Penn IUR depends: the Advisory Board who offer invaluable experience and advice, the Penn IUR scholarly network of faculty and external experts who contribute vital new knowledge, the Penn students who participate in Penn IUR programs, the audiences who attend events and stimulate important conversations, and last, but not least, Penn IUR’s energetic staff whose diligent work make Penn IUR and its many undertakings flourish.
We invite you to explore selected contents of the report below or download the full report here (PDF).
Selected Contents
Briefs and Special Reports
Powering the Slum II: Alternative Sources of Energy in Accra’s Informal Settlements
Eugénie Birch and James Kwame Mensah
A Comparative Study of International Financial Models to Increase Long-term Rental Housing Supply in South Korea
Katie Ferguson and Derek Hyra, The Metropolitan Center, American University; Katherine Marinari, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Eugénie Birch and Amanda Lloyd, University of Pennsylvania; Fitz Nicholas, Wilson Center
Good and Bad News About Income Inequality in Urban America
John Landis
Doom Loop or Boom Loop? Work from Home and the Challenges Facing America’s Big Cities
Richard Voith, Susan Wachter, David Stanek, and Hyojin Lee
The Challenge of Affordable Housing: Shared Equity as a Way Forward
Meagan Ehlenz
Penn IUR in Print
Why Young Adults Increasingly Live with Their Parents
How will Philadelphia finance climate change?
Key Messages for Urban Climate Finance in the IPCC Special Report on Cities
Convenings
Special Briefings on the Fiscal Outlook of State and Local Governments
