Explain how. Guest if you go back to 1980, and you were thinking about the future of americas cities, you would have seen, potentially, a very bleak future. That was the time when, particularly our urban cores, cities like new york city and los angeles, were in the middle of a bona fide crisis. You had seen years of deindustrialization ravage the working and middleclass publishings of those cities, and you had seen an enormous middleclass flight to other regions entirely. That was very hard on the Fiscal Foundation of the cities and also the civic life of those cities. But then, in fact, you saw a tremendous renaissance over the subsequent decades. That renaissance was not even. You did not see it in every single American City, but you did see it in a handful of cities that had a renaissance in governance. The Manhattan Institute, where im president , was very deeply involved in an urban renaissance but one thing we have been arguing for some years is that, wait a second, everyone. We are in a period of relative health. You see a comeback of many major american cities, but lets not take this for granted. Lets look at some of those frailties. Lets look at some of those vulnerabilities. Lets look at the fact that we do not always have the wisest longterm fiscal and economic policies. People seem to be preparing for only good times, not for potential reversals. When the covid crisis hit, i fear that many of those underlying challenges, many of those problems that had been neglected started to really come to the fore and were sharply exacerbated. So my fear is that youre going to see a period of 1980 to about 2020 when you saw this tremendous prosperity in a number of major urban centers. And 2020 beyond, if we do not approach this in a thoughtful, careful way, could represent a reversal in which that Economic Activity, that talent, that flooded into our cities starts to flood out of our cities. Now that is a very dire view. I dont think it is inevitable by any means. But that is what i believe thoughtful Civic Leaders should be working to prevent. How can we extend the renaissance . How can we deepen it and ensure it reaches more americans and more citydwellers . To me, the covid crisis is both just very kind of unique and pressing in itself, but it is also something that represents a that kind of correction and reversal that many of us had feared for many years. Host here is a statistic that points to the growth of cities. This is from a New York Times story. At the outset of 2020, americas biggest metropolises had been in an extended period of growth with 10 cities home to one third of all u. S. Economic production, and, this is interesting, produced half of all the patents in the United States. What were the factors that lead to that kind of growth in those select cities . Guest there were a number of things at work. One thing you saw was that cities that, early in the 20th century, had a reasonably large collegeeducated population up faring veryd differently from cities that have a much smaller educated population. Essentially, there was a Path Dependence at work in which having certain civic assets, particularly a Major Research university, wound up paying very large dividends in the future. One reason is that, when you have a Large Research university, you would often times see those graduates remain in the immediate era in the immediate area. You would see them build businesses in that area. That would be a kind of self reinforcing process in which skilled professionals in other regions that did not have the same Critical Mass as other skilled professionals began to flock to the cities that became dense concentrations of that kind of talent. So it became that kind of increasing returns dynamic that became quite pronounced to the point where it actually had some pretty difficult, pretty negative effects on communities that did not already have those advantages. So you could say cities that started out with a bit of a head start saw that grow and grow and grow, so that has complicated, mixed effects for the country as a whole. But also, when you are talking about scientific innovation, when you are talking about entrepreneurial innovation, it really does benefit from positive spillovers, positive externalities. When you have a lot of Business Enterprises, a lot of talented people working on the same kinds of problems in the same area, you can see a lot of iteration. You can see a lot of collaboration that would be much harder to achieve, certainly in other eras when Transportation Technology and Communications Technology was not quite as advanced. You could not see that same kind of collaboration. So there are serious gains to being concentrated in those areas. One big question we face is whether that will continue to be the case in the future. Or have we seen Communications Technologies change in a way that makes that kind of dense concentration of talent less necessary . I personally believe it will continue to be necessary, but that is a very deep question for those cities that have made their bones, that have become successful, as concentrations of talent. Host so seven months or eight months into the covid pandemic here in United States, what trends are you seeing that cities are facing that causes concern . Guest well, there are a number of them. And the first and most important one is a deterioration in Public Safety. Now, when you are talking about crime statistics, we need to keep in mind this is a moving target. Things can change quickly. But if you are looking at cities that release Realtime Data on crime, over the last few months, there has been an unambiguous increase, and in particular, you have seen an increase in homicides. We have seen that in new york city. But you have also seen it in a number of other cities as well. You have seen an increase in shootings, whether or not they result in a death. And that is a huge problem. Because when you think about that urban renaissance we talked about earlier on, one precondition for that Economic Growth, for that revival, for the fact that those who could afford to live elsewhere decided to make their lives in major american cities, the preconditions for all of that was the dramatic improvement in Public Safety that you saw in the 1990s and 2000s, and that dramatic improvement in Public Safety was not just about making cities more attractive and appealing for middleclass and affluent residents. It had a transformative effect on poor and workingclass people, for whom they did not necessarily have another option. They were constrained. They could not just move to the suburbs. They did not always have the resources they needed to pick up space and move to another state entirely. These are people for whom this dramatic improvement in Public Safety had a huge effect on every aspect of their lives. And it makes intuitive sense. If you are someone with limited assets, property crimes can ruin you. Property crime can be something that prevents you from climbing the economic ladder. It is something that, because it engenders fears, means it is actually harder for you to form deeper, constructive relationships with other people. It makes everyone withdraw from public life. It makes everyone withdraw from the streets. And it also engenders a lot of distrust. Society is where you have a lot societies where you have a lot of Violent Crime, cities where you have a lot of Violent Crime are places where you dont have the kind of civic trust that really greases the wheels of commerce and innovation and so much else. If you are thinking about upward mobility for poor and workingclass people, Public Safety is nonnegotiable. It is the foundation of everyone else. And that deterioration, if it is temporary, if it is a blip, if get this under control, then that makes Everything Else much, much easier. But that really is the thing that is absolutely nonnegotiable. The other thing forgive me. Host let me just stay with Public Safety. Lets talk about mitigation if we talk about the challenges. So, of course, in the wake of George Floyds killing and the protests around the country, there is a major rethinking, spurred on by a lot of civic protest, about the work of Police Departments around the country. The Manhattan Institute has been very much involved in this over in this topic over the years. They were, as i understand it, big proponents of the broken windows theory of policing decades back. So what is the institutes thinking as the country rethinks policing about the best way forward . Guest well, we have a number of scholars who work on policing and criminal justice issues, including heather mcdonald, rafael mangual, jim copeland, among others. We have journalists who work on this set of issues as well, so there is, as you might expect, a range of opinions. We always want to encourage our scholars to go where their ideas take them, provided they are confident with our deep belief in the central importance of Public Safety. And i say, when you are looking at this moment and looking to the future, it is very important to keep in mind that effective policing is vitally important. You can change society in any number of different ways, but effective policing, that sense of Public Safety, is a foundation for Economic Growth for a flourishing Civil Society and Everything Else we care about. So then the question is what are the policies that will deliver more effective policing over time . And there are many thoughtful people who offer different perspectives on that set of issues, but one thing that i am personally very concerned about right now is that there is a sense in which we are demanding more from Police Officers. We are demanding that they be more sensitive, that they be more community oriented, that they approach their work in ways that will enhance the legitimacy of policing, and i think that that is a valid demand, its a valid expectation. That is what you want. When you want to approach policing in these possible ways, you need to think about what are the policies that are actually going to get you there . And i would argue that the idea of defunding the police is actually moving in a counterproductive direction. One thing that you would absolutely want to see is better training of Police Officers, and better training can be quite resource intensive. Or when you are thinking about compensation, there are many legitimate debates and discussions we can have about work rules, about compensation and what have you. But when you are trying to attract talented people to a profession, particularly a profession that is under fire, a profession where there are a lot of very sharp criticisms of the folks in that profession, you will often end up need to compensate even more generously. There are ways to be flexible. You may want to change the way you are offering pension and Health Benefits and what have you. You might want to change the way the career arc of a Police Officer or another Public Employee works over time. But what you do not want to do is move in this very reflexive way from a position of demonizing Law Enforcement from demonizing Law Enforcement, from a position of demonizing Public Employees. Rather, you want to see how can we restructure these organizations . And that restructuring might mean more resources rather than less. It might mean focusing in some areas rather than others. The other thing that is really important to keep in mind with police is that policing, to a very large extent, is about deterring crime. And so when we are talking about criminal justice issues, people often talk about incarceration and policing as though they are entirely separate issues. But, in fact, when you look at the United States, compared to other market democracies, we actually spend somewhat less on policing and more on incarceration, and i would argue and again, you know, this is something that is very debatable and other thoughtful people have different views but i would argue that investing in Public Safety on the front end, investing in deterrence and prevention can be an effective way of reducing the need for a more punitive approach on the backend. That is not to say we do not need incarceration. Far from it. That is not to say that you do not need to punish in a thoughtful, responsible way. But i think that is something that people are really missing when they are talking about defunding the police and actually pulling resources from programs, from training, from things that can actually make police more trusted and more effective at doing the work that we all need them to do. Host lets return to challenges for cities that have been highlighted by the pandemic. What is another . Guest another big challenge, particularly for those cities that had really flourished during the urban renaissance, during that period from 1980 to the pandemic itself, is that many of the cities are very dependent on skilled professionals, high income households. That is true for a number of reasons. When youre looking at the economy as a whole, what you see is a transformation in these economies from an economy rooted more on the tradable sector, more on manufacturing and what have you, to an economy that is very service oriented. And when you are looking at those professionals, they often times outsource a lot of household production. This could be true if you are a parent, with childcare. It could be true for restaurant meals, delivery any number of services that make the cities very attractive as skilled professionals. It allows you to work longer hours and what have you. So that has been something that has generated a lot of employment for workingclass people, particularly for workingclass immigrants. Now when you have a pandemic, when you have a shift to remote work, when you see a variety of economic structural changes that make those cities less attractive to affluent, skilled professionals, then you have knock on consequences for those working and middleclass people who are in those Service Industries that are dependent on the dollars of higher income households. Another closely related dimension is the fiscal dimension. And that is the fact that a number of cities have moved in a direction where they are dependent on a volatile tax base. They are dependent on the taxes paid by a relatively small number of very wealthy households, and that means that they are very dependent on the business cycle. That means that, when there is any kind of economic downturn, even when you leave the pandemic aside, you can see a sharp correction when you have some decline in income for those professionals, and their incomes tend to be a bit more cyclical. And certainly if you have an exodus of those individuals, of those families, then that can mean that you need a very different approach to public finances and also, potentially, a very different attitude towards public spending than you did when you took that population for granted. Host staying with the knowledgebased workers, university of chicago is suggesting that as much as 40 of current u. S. Jobs can be done remotely. I know you are already seeing, we all are, these debates happening about whether or not companies are, after a few months at it, thinking this is a different thing. Even if a good percentage of the 40 ends up in permanently remote, what is the impact on the economic base . There probably are positives and negatives. Guest it depends on whether or not you are looking at this from the perspective of the country as a whole or from the perspective of cities. One could argue that, from the perspective of the country as a whole, this is a rebalancing. One can argue we are coming out of an era that i hope will continue but an era of enormous urban success, but urban success, as we discussed earlier, has been very concentrated in a small number of metropolitan areas that has a dense concentration of skilled professionals. Now then, of course, there are those regions in the rust belt, many rural parts of the country that has seen a real brain drain. So one possibility is that the rise of remote work will create more flexibility in that regard and will make it somewhat easier and more tractable for those other communities to compete for talent. But, of course, if you believe that that concentration of talent is particularly valuable for the United States strategically, for the United States in the wider world, because there are particular externalities that are harder to capture when you are distributing that talent in a more broad way, geographically, that is a cost you need to be mindful of, from the perspective of the country. That is one way to look at it. And i know that there are many cities suburban, rural some cities that have had a more difficult time in recent decades that are seeking to capitalize. The tricky part is that you are going to see those professionals who can be mobile, who are in a position to move, they will want to move to places with a very high quality of life, places that offer them attractive amenities. Certainly, it could be pla