Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140517

Brookings both for people in the room, who are watching on cspan and i via webcast to the closing event of infrastructure week. So a lot of folks public, private, civic have been involved in designing infrastructure week and pulling it off, and to all of you from brookings, thank you. And also thank you to the foundations and corporations that really have made our work possible. The ford foundation, the [inaudible] foundation, hitachi, aig, ge, rbc, kkr and all the members of our metropolitan leadership council. They really have made our research possible. Now, the timing of this week could not be better. And i know congressman delaneys going to talk about this. There are clearly shortterm federal actions involving the gas tax and the Highway Trust Fund that are critical and really a new way of the National Government engaging. But there really are metaissues that are incoming this week informing this week. Does the United States have what it takes to build and retrofit a new generation of infrastructure for todays pressing and disruptive challenges . This is a pivotal decade because of supersized economic, social and environmental challenges facing the country. We need more jobs. We still need 7. 1 million jobs to make up the jobs we lost during the downturn, keep pace with labor dynamics, population growth. We need were the jobs better jobs because we went from 81 Million People live anything poverty and near poverty in this country in 2000 to 107 million. And we need to build communities that are resilient and sustainable in the face of economic restructuring and environmental challenges. So infrastructure can play an enormous role in addressing these super challenges both at the National Scale and, frankly, at the city and metropolitan scale which drive most of the economy if we think differently and innovate continuously. So what weve tried to do at brookings, and this really is a setup for congressman delaney, weve really tried to do four things. Weve tried to redefine infrastructure for a new era. Weve defined it, essentially, as seven sectors of infrastructure that really have all their own methods by how we design them, how we finance them, how we deliver them and how we govern them from roads and transit to trade and logistics to energy and water and so forth. Were a modern, sophisticated economy, and infrastructure means a variety of things as we all know, and we can understand that. We can basically not just come up with ideas for solutions, but actually execute them. Second, we redefined the impact of infrastructure, right . This is 14. 3 million jobs in this country. 11 percent of our jobs. And the incredible thing about the infrastructure super sector is that these are good jobs. They pay better wages than many other sectors of the economy. So when you invest in infrastructure, theyre a platform for broader growth, but the jobs in that super sector are very good. Third, weve tried to redefine what we mean by innovation for infrastructure. You cannot build 20th century infrastructure for a 21st century economy. Particularly how disresultive this economy is, particularly given the potential to use the technology, to deploy it, to apply it in ways where we get better results. And finally, and this really, i think, will get to congressman delaneys thoughts, a is were trying to redefine how we invest in infrastructure. Because at the end of the day, you need to invest for the future and, frankly, the entire system is a Public Private exercise in the United States, and its federalist in design and execution. We are not a country, like many of our competitors, that really just have a Central Government that, basically, has a National Plan and then does the bulk of the investment. We are a federal republic, and we are a Public Private enterprise. And so as we go forward today, we have some excellent innovators from around the country who are really doing the hard work of putting forth a vision for what infrastructure can look like in this decade and the next century. We really need to think differently about this and align it to what is a disruptive and pivotal moment, but also align it to how we operate as a nation and as a society. With that, i want to introduce, i think, one of the most innovative members of congress. John delaney, congressman from marylands sixth district, right . Hometown, right, washington d. C. But also someone who comes into the National Government from the private sector, ceo of a Company Listed on the new york stock exchange. This is really someone coming in not just with private sector expertise in the abstract, but with ideas that can be deployed for, again, a very different kind of moment where the National Government needs to be a stable and reliable partner, a platform, a foundation for investing in the kind of infrastructure that moves our country forward. So congressman delaney on the critical committees that really deal with so much of what were going to talk about today, thank you for coming today, looking forward to your remarks. [applause] thank you, bruce, for that very nice introduction and for all the work you do. And i want to thank everyone for being here and for your significant participation in infrastructure week. Its, obviously, a topic near and dear to my heart, and i also want to thank brookings for hosting this and for all of your contributions to this topic and, generally, your contributions to Public Policy in this country which in many ways is singular. So its great to be here, and its great to be part of a brookings event. So in my judgment, increasing the Infrastructure Investment in the United States should be our top domestic economic priority by any measure. And i say this for really three reasons. The first reason relates to some of the things that bruce touched on which is that its an incredibly important jobs program to some extent, and it particularly focuses on creating middleskilled jobs which is exactly what this country needs. If you look at the data around job creation in this country, were actually doing a pretty good job creating highskilled jobs, and were doing a very good job creating lowskilled jobs because highskilled jobs kind of directly and indirectly drive the creation of lowskilled jobs. But what were really lacking is these middleskilled jobs, the kind of jobs where people can have one job, have a decent standard of living and raise their family. Thats really where the shortage is. Thats the part of the market thats been hollowed out by the macro trends of globalization and technology. And infrastructure is such a perfect way, investing in our infrastructure is such a perfect way to create those jobs because it creates them directly through the people who actually build the infrastructure and indirectly around all the manufacturing that goes with infrastructure. Because if you think about our ability to compete in manufacturing, you realize that the kind of things you have to manufacture for infrastructure, you know, to simplify it are big and heavy. And the United States has a competitive advantage on building big and heavy things. And so itll be incredibly stimulative to our manufacturing sector. The first reason we need to invest is because it creates jobs. And i actually think this point needs to be emphasized because i come from the Financial Services industry, and people often ask me what do i think the chances of another financial crisis in the near term . I actually think that the chances of another financial crisis in the near term are almost zero. But when people ask me what are the chances of another jobs crisis where the effects of globalization and Technology Continue to accelerate and hollow out the middle class of this country at a much rapid, much more rapid rate than we anticipate . I put the chances of that at pretty high. And so to think that we dont need a, potentially, a big job ares program in this country, i think is very shortsighted. The second thing is it makes us competitive, and i care deeply about the United States ability to compete in this new global and technologyenabled world which we all know were living in. And having world class infrastructure is critically important, a as you all know, to doing that. So it creates jobs, it makes us more competitive in the long term, and it also pencils out. If you look over time, for every dollar we spend on infrastructure in this country we get almost two dollars of economic return. Its 1. 92, to be precise. So its rare from a domestic Public Policy perspective that you can do things that do all three of those things; create jobs in the short term, make you more competitive in the long term and pencil out. Which is why i think this should be our top priority. And everyone knows about the challenges we face in infrastructure, but its also a huge opportunity. I mean, the numbers are very significant. I mean, you hear numbers three trillion, four trillion, some people even say five trillion dollars of an investment we need in this country to bring our infrastructure up to a world class level. To handle an investment of that size, we have to, to some extent, deconstruct how we create infrastructure in this country and make sure we have good Public Policy initiatives around all of them. And so it seems to me the way we create infrastructure in this country falls into one of four categories. We either create infrastructure by having the government grant money to do it, so the federal money grants money, state governments provide grants, a whole variety of governments provide grants to build infrastructure. And most of that infrastructure is stuff thats really related to the common good, right . So thats the first way we build infrastructure. The second way we build infrastructure is by charging user fees, and theres a whole varian i of projects around variety of projects around this country as we all know that are really based on some sort of a user fee scenario. The third way we build infrastructure in this country is the private sector does it through good Public Private partnerships where the private sector is building the infrastructure, operating the infrastructure, and its being used by the public. And then the fourth way we create infrastructure in this country is we finance it. In other words, someone borrows money typically a local government to build something, and they have to pay it back across the long term. So if we ever want to close the 3, 4, 5 trillion gap in the Infrastructure Investment in this country, we need to be doing things in all four of those buckets, and we shouldnt think of these things as mutually exclusive. Because some people say, well, thats a good idea, but it doesnt do this. Thats the wrong answer. We need multiple tools in our tool kit if we really want to have a meaningful improvement in the infrastructure in this country and make a significant investment in the infrastructure of this country. We have to do it in a lot of different ways, because its a very complicated and sophisticated landscape. So thats the other thing i like to tell people, have an open mind. All of the tools are virtuous because we have such a big need. And so the main piece of legislation that ive been working on for the last year around this challenge really fits into that financing category. So, again, we grant money, we charge user fees, we do Public Private partnerships and finance it. What weve tried to create, for lack of a better term, is the category killer of financing. In other words, the big 800pound gorilla that will take care of a lot of the financing needs this country has in the long term. And thats what weve created with something called the partnership to build america act which was a bill that i introduced in the house of representatives almost a year ago, and it had a companion bill introduced in the senate a few months ago. And right now this bill is the most significant piece of bipartisan economic legislation in the whole of the congress. We have 31 House Republicans on the bill and 31 house democrats. And we have a half a Dozen Senate Republicans and a half a dozen senate democrats. So its completely bipartisan, and in a meaningful way. In other words, were deeply penetrating the congress, and were adding members every week. What the bill does is pretty simple. Its complicated the way it lays out, but its actually pretty simple. We launch a large scale infrastructure financing entity which is designed to be a large scale bank bond guarantor to be used by states and local governments around the country to finance any type of infrastructure. I love the way bruce framed the different categories of infrastructure. I call them the food groups of infrastructure, right . This entity allows us, allows states and local governments to use this money for transportation, for water, for energy, for communications, even for education. To think in the world that were going to live in in the next 20 or 30 years from now that we dont think of education facilities as Core Infrastructure to a competitive United States, i think, is crazy. So all of those categories are eligible for financing. The American Infrastructure Fund is capitalized up front with 50 billion that goes in day one and creates the cap aal bed capital bed for this financing entity, and it stays in there for 50 years. We believe the American Infrastructure Fund can leverage itself 1015 to 1 in the private markets. So it takes that 50 billion of capital and potentially leverages it up to 750 billion. And itll exist for 50 years, so that money can revolve up and down for 50 years, potentially financing 2 trillion of infrastructure over 50 years. And if you do the math on that, that would create three million jobs in this country which is more jobs than exist in my home state of maryland, to put itwuop perspective. So thats what the American Infrastructure Fund does. The way its capitalized is very unique. The government does not put the 50 billion into the entity. Its put in by private companies who buy bonds very cheap, nongovernmentguaranteed, longterm bonds. 50year, 1 not government guaranteed. They would never make this investment in a normal kind of free market system. But to create an incentive for them to do this, we say that for every dollar a u. S. Corporation invests in the American Infrastructure Fund, they get the right to repatriate a certain amount of their overseas earnings back to the United States tax free. We all know, and its come into sharp focus in the last couple of weeks, that weve got an International Tax law problem in this country, right . And its causing almost half of u. S. Cash to sit overseas of our largest corporations, and the cash overseas is growing at a faster rate than it is in the United States. So pretty soon u. S. Companies will have more cash overseas than they do in the United States. And theyre not bringing it back because we have a system and this system is unique in the world where we require our companies to pay tax locally where they earn the money, and then when they bring it back to the United States, they have to pay be u. S. Tax. So its effectively a double tax scheme that we have. No other country has this. What the other countries do is you pay your tax locally, and when you bring your money back to homeland, if you will, you dont have to pay any tax. Thats why this cash is accumulating overseas which is why pfizer, for example, is doing one of these tax inversions. The real driver is the fact that they have 60 billion in cash overseas. If they bring it back to the United States, theyve got to pay 20 billion in federal taxes, so they might as well use it to potentially overpay for a company. What theyre doing is creating a path for some of that money to come back taxfree. Its not a free lunch. They have to put some money in this American Infrastructure Fund. We make them buy be bonds if they want to bring it back taxfree that they would never buy, that are probably only worth 20 cents on the dollar. The good news is they get to bring back money, right . The good news for us is we get capitalized without a penny of Government Spending a massive infrastructure financing vehicle thatll be around for 50 years and make a material difference against this challenge and opportunity we have around infrastructure. And the reason this bill so bipartisan is because it brings together two pieces of Public Policy that each party has been spot on right about. We democrats im a democrat weve been advocating for an increased investment in infrastructure in this country for a long time for all the reasons weve talked about. And is weve been 100 right about that. My republican colleagues have been pointing out for some time that we need to fix this International Tax system, that its a problem. Its making us not competitive. Its reducing investments in the United States among our largest companies. And guess what . Theyve been 100 spot on right about that. And so this bill fuses together those two pieces of good Public Policy, and it as a result has garnered such significant bipartisan support. As i said, its the most significant piece of Bipartisan Legislation in the congress. Its a big idea, its an innovative idea, and its being done in a completely bipartisan way. In fact, we wont even add members unless we have a companion from the other side to keep that march of bipartisanship going down the field. Were going to have a hundred members on each side of the aisle pretty soon with this bill. And recently in light of the Highway Trust Fund situation now im going to pivot to how this, the momentum on our bill can be used to potentially do something even bigger weve thought about how we take this groundswell of support we have around the partnership to build america act. And we introduce it into the Highway Trust Fund because, as most of you know, we in Congress Need forcing to do things. [laughter] and the Highway Trust Fund which is, obviously, a disaster in the making, its a pending insolvency, if you will, could also become a huge opportunity if positioned right. So what weve said is this why dont we take the fact that there is bipartisan support around increasing our investment in infrastructure and fixing the International Tax system and not only do the partnership to build america act, but lets do something bigger, and lets deal with the Highway Trust Fund at the same time. So what weve proposed because if you think about what were doing with our bill, were raising 50 billion of capital from corporations and allowing them to bring back 200 billion from overseas, because the ratio is 4 to 1. For every dollar of bonds they buy in the American Infrastructure Fund, they can bring back four dollars from overseas. So were bringing back 200 billion from overseas. Theres a lot more money over there. Lets bring back all of that money, or lets put in place a mechanism for more of that money can to come back, and lets take additional revenues that can be generated off that and use it to capitalize or prefund the Highway Trust Fund for several years to get its insolvency off the table which will give us time to figure out how to fix it in the long term. Because in truth, the Highway Trust Fund should be funded with a flow source of funds. Right . Using kind of capital, in other words, putting it in and prefunding it is suboptimal. But in a crisis mode, its what we should do to give us time because we all know the longterm fixes of a Highway Trust Fund are complicated, right . How do we deal with gas tax, vehicle miles driven, the fact that the countrys becoming increasingly urbanized, and a lot of the urban dwellers dont drive, but they use the roads. How do we deal with that is complicated, and were not going to figure that out in a couple months. So last week i laid out in the Washington Post ap idea that has gotten a lot of momentum ever since we started talking about which builds on the partnership to build america act bipartisanship but takes it bigger. Its doing something bigger. We say lets take all the money thats sitting overseas, right . And do a mandatory tax on it of 10 , give Companies Ten years to pay the money in, but then they can bring the money back freely. So we create a path for the almost 2 trillion sitting overseas to come back to the United States which is what most of u. S. Corporate america wants to do. That money, the money thats raised from that, can be used for two things. The first thing it can be used for is to prefund the Highway Trust Fund for six years. In other words, the shortfall. And so that we can have a measured and meaningful conversation about how to fix it in the long term and not have to worry about it for the next several years. Take 60 of the money and do that. Take 40 of the money and create the infrastructure fund. And at the same time, lets change our International Tax system to move to a modified territorial system which is what most of the world does. Which means you pay tax locally on your earnings, and if you want to bring it back to your home country, you can bring it back taxfree unless where you pay tax has a particularly low tax rate, then you have to gross it up to a minimum. So if someone sets up a zero tax haven, youre still going to have to pay tax to bring the money back. But if you earn the money in a place that charges 2025 tax like most of our competitors, you can bring it back taxfree. So thats our framing. Lets lift up, lets take this bipartisan support around the act and, potentially, lets do something bigger. Lets take the Highway Trust Fund insolvency off the table for six years, give us time to fix it. Lets take some of the money and create the American Infrastructure Fund. This way well walk away with a clear net increase in the amount of money well spend on infrastructure in this country, and so well create the jobs, well make ourselves more competitive. And and at the same time, lets fix this International Tax system is that money so that money can flow. This would be so utterly transformative to the shortterm job creation opportunities in this country, into the longterm competitiveness of this country, i think it would be a singular and historic move for us to do as a nation. And the good news is were coming to this debate already from a bipartisan perspective. In other words, the momentum on the partnership to build america act proves that both parties want to do this. Both parties want to increase our investment in infrastructure. Both parties want to fix our International Tax system. So one of the things were going to focus on is how do we take that momentum and not just do the partnership to build america act which we should do, but potentially do something bigger. So thats where my focus is on infrastructure. And its so great to have your support. Bruce, its really great to be here and have this opportunity the talk. I know you have many other experts that are going to opine on this subject. Again, i want to thank all of brookings, the whole of brookings. It is a singular institution, and it makes an incredible contribution to this country. And i want to thank all of our individual supporters that have been so helpful. Youve been there with us from the beginning. Youve been constant supporters, and its really helped our efforts immensely. And i want to thank everyone for taking your time to listen to what i have to say today. And, again, im an optimist. I think we can fix a all of these problems, and i think what were laying out here is a good first step to make this country more competitive, create jobs and, hopefully in 10 or 15 year when we have infrastructure week, were celebrating all the success weve had. So thank you. [applause] morning, everybody. Good morning. Well, i think you can see why we wanted to have congressman delaney provide these remarks for us today. Obviously, a very thoughtful proposal that he has discussed there in congress, bipartisan. We always like it when its bipartisan. Its a really elegant solution, definitely something thats creative and, boy, we really like the optimism. And i think thats a really important thing particularly as, you know, for this close of infrastructure week. So my job is robert puentes, im a senior fellow here at the brookings institution. Im a manager of the metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative and welcome you all again to the closing event here of infrastructure week 2014. So for those of you who are following on the webcast or following on the tv, wanted to invite you to join the conversation. Go ahead and tweet rebuildrenew is the hash talking about and join the very robust twitter conversation thats been happening really all throughout the entire week. So we have an excellent panel lined up, but before i get into that, i want to just quickly recap some of the key themes and discussion points that we heard all during the this week starting back on monday, because even though i think that we were certainly successful at our initial goal which was to amp up infrastructure, to push it to the front burner of the National Policy discourse, as bruce and the congressman talked about, its obviously something that we think is very critical. But weve got to really Start Talking about it. Weve got to move the conversation to action. And having the president , having the prime Vice President talk at earlier this week, we also want to make sure its a conversation that isnt just reverberating here in washington. It obviously matters for all the reasons weve talked about, it matters whats going on in congress, it matters weve fixed the Highway Trust Fund, it matters whats happened at the midterms and all these things are important, but this is not the only conversation about infrastructure in america today. Its just not the whole entire story. Its really not even reflective, frankly, of the washington conversation. You heard from the congressman, there are lots of these ideas that are out there. We need to Start Talking more optimistically, we need to start getting down to brass tacks and really figure out whats possible, what we can do here in america today. But its also not reflective, i think, of the conversation because infrastructure, as bruce mentioned, so very broad and multifaceted. Its not just about roads and bridges. Obviously, that matters for all the reasons that we know it matters and particularly after this horrible winter that weve had. Theres going to be potholes and all that stuff going on. We know that transportation matters. But by limiting the discussion of infrastructure to just that narrow a band particularly narrowing it to just roads and bridges were failing to recognize the multifaceted way that were delivering, designing, governing and financing a range of Infrastructure Projects here in this country. So i was encouraged to hear this week and we did talk about a lot of different areas of infrastructure. As bruce mentioned, here at Metro Program we think about infrastructure in these seven different ways. We do talk about transportation both intra and inter metropolitan transportation, but its also trade and logistics, its energy, its water, its telecommunications, its public works and public buildings. The congressman talked about education is one, folks like governor rendell talked about green infrastructure, but we think that these seven areas really capture the essence of the infrastructure debate in the United States today. And we know that all these things work together. Its clearly a system of systems. Water, transport, energy, all these things are fundamentally connected. When it comes down to what we need to do today which is how do you deliver projects in an era of real if fiscal constraints and political gridlock in many places, weve got to deal with these sectors. The federal role in each of these sectors of infrastructure varies dramatically. What the federal government is doing in telecommunications is not the same thing theyre doing on public transit, it was not the same thing theyre doing on freight rail, water and other areas. Other important themes we heard throughout the week, one is that, obviously, infrastructure matters to the american economy. This was a big drum beat right from the very beginning with a big event with the claim per of commerce. We brought in Business Leaders to talk fundamentally about infrastructure, how it enables them to do their business and to compete globally. As bruce mentioned, a very major focus on jobs, clearly we need to create more jobs in this country as we put out a report earlier this week. Joe cane and i at brookings showed that 11 of u. S. Jobs are in one of these different sectors of infrastructure. Not even the indirect jobs, not the guy whos cutting the hair or doing his work, but 11 of the American Work force. This was a theme that was echoed by policy link this week, by the aflcio and a whole bunch of others. The direct connect between infrastructure and the American Work force. How do we design Water Infrastructure to its sustainable and resilient and its obviously flooding conditions today, Water Infrastructure isner and tear to our hearts. The main preoccupation we heard and the main disruption was around funding and financing. A steady drum beet, how do we get things done in this difficult era. But its also where we heard the most about solutions. Not civil very bullet Style Solutions but real tools in the toolbox. New ideas out there. Who is thinking differently. How are they getting things down and how to learn from one another. First its clear that for some areas of transportation, some areas of infrastructure like transportation, were going to have to fund them in traditional ways. We talked about raising the gasoline tax vs. Wyoming and washington, tolling on the interstate. Ballot measures and transportation for america and the center for transportation excellence. A great workshop helping states get reddy to campaigns around ballot measures to go to the voters and see if theyre willing to raise money for transportation infrastructure. Theyre doing this already and at it smooth well something well see in 2015. Heard about new partnerships for getting things done. Combination between the private, public, and philanthropy, and trying to figure out how to get things done, leveraging private sector capital and connecting of that witness traditional areas of infrastructure so we can get things done in the unique way. So the Bipartisan Policy Centers event eyelights these ideasing along with the Infrastructure Exchange and what theyre doing in washington, california, oregon, and british columbia, to develop standardization, transparency and develop a real pipeline of products that works for both the public and the private sector. Its true that up none of these ideas will solve all problemful theres no real Silver Bullet solution to what were facing today. But it is clear in addition to the priority of fixing the trust fund as has been steady theme throughout the week, the true partnerships of government entities, private financeeyers, firm and fin al tropists will have to do the hard work to get this stuff done. Anybody saying its going to be easy, but i am encouraged with the stuff we heard this week about new inslow saidors, new generation of innovators, new ideas and activities working to fill the gap. That is a backdrop that leads into the discussion that we want to have. So ill bro dues the panelists quickly. Their bios are in the back and you can read the details. They will be high lating innovations in which high highlighting innovations in which theyre engaged. First up, we have have dan kinkead, the director of protects in the detroit citys implementation office. I love, implementation office. At the name suggests dan will talk about the range of engagements underway to catalyze transformation, and how all that relates to Economic Growth and how that relates to neighborhood stability. Dan was trained as an architect and recently became the father of twins. Congratulations on that. Probably harder than fixing detroit, and then after dan, the shhh aalini, involved in a collaboration working to build partnerships across water, energy, and transportation. And i think she may be the only person who actually has a patent, begin her work on interactive Climate Change adaptation cools. Next will be shinpei tsay. The directoff or research and development in Transit Center. He has a broad range of expertise in making the environment more accessible, equitable and sustainable from the policy side and the practical side. Real work on theground. She was most recently the director of cities and transportation for the Carnegie Endowment which i think is on the other side of this wall. And then eric shaw, the director of community and Economic Development in Salt Lake City where he is responsible for an impossibly wide range of activities in the city, including planning, Economic Development, transportation, engineering, building services, housing, neighborhood development, and even the arts council. So, i dont know what he does in his spare time, or if he has any, but well hear from eric in a bit. So what may be an unusual in act for us here at the Metro Program. We dent have any big prepare additions no comfy chairs, but given the excitement we did want to make this big more active, more interactive. Weol to the audience relatively quickly for questions and those on the webcast or tv, use the hash tag rebuild and renew and well get those in the conversation as we follow up throughout the week. So please join me in welcoming the panel and bring up dan kinkead. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you all for allowing me to speak with you this morning. The image you see on the screen is one that you have probably seep before of seen before of detroit, one that illustrates disinvestment, depopulation and conventional thinking that may have led to both of those things. But for us in detroit future city and the implement addition office and a group that implements with a host of partners, public, private, fin al fill an topic and otherwise, we think i might be an Incredible Opportunity for transformative innovation, within infrastructure, and looking at things differently than the way we may have looked at them in the past. With a real opportunity to begin to stabilize our city as a whole, minimize costs, increase revenue, and ensure we can improve the health of our detroiters and those within the southeast michigan region, to ensure we can establish 21st 21st century systems that begin to mitigate the impacts of some of our older 19th century systems, beginning to drive up employment actually as we do them, ensure equity along the way, and lastly, provide a lasting resilience to a city and a region that really doesnt have it but certainly needs it. And as we do this, as an implementation office, and we have begun a few projects, we think there are listens for appear here, not just legacy cities like detroit throughout the United States or north america, but also for those cities rapidly urbanizing across the globe. The issues that detroit is facing today could be lessons for those in lagos, mumbai, and they matter globery and we as a network can deal with those. In maintenance cases the expansive polarization of a leg guess city in the u. S. And an urban nicing city somewhere else may be seen as a kind of line. In fact its a circle and it comes back, and to the proximity between the two realities is quite close. So, some of the things were beginning to work on right now that we should talk about, the first is green infrastructure. The idea we have the able to clean our air here, to clean our water to begin to use these spaces to bring in carbon bufferrers in detroit we have expansive freeways as you might imagine and many of them sit directly next to neighborhoods. We have three times the rate of childhood asthma in detroit compared to national average. Thats not by chance. How might wey our available vacant land to actually plant specific species of trees to suck up co2 matter, and were in the middle of developing projects right now with a host of partners in the city as well as those within the epa. How might we begin to deploy blue Infrastructure Systems . This is particularly important, and i think some folks are going to talk about this is the morning, given the del luge were experiencing outside in d. C. Right now, in detroit, we have over 20 square miles of vacant land. Perfectly vacant land. Right . Thats not a structure on it and thats occupiable land. Not the right away and things like that. Roughly equivalent to the size of manhattan. How might we use the size of manhattan to deal with a bigger issue which is storm water runoff in a city like detroit, especially given the fact that detroit sits on 22 of the worlds fresh water supply, 84 of the u. S. Fresh water supply. We need to be better stewards here because in detroit every time we get a little over half inch of rain, the storm waters goes to the cache basin and we overwhelm or sewer system and do a direct discharge into the Detroit River and the great lakes. We are taking raw human waste and putting it out there. We need to do better than that. Right . This is an important asset that detroit sits on, its a global asset, and we think we can begin to make the changes here by deploying very soft systems, new 21 not century systemses that mapping the hydrology and remove the 19th century system that costs Copious Amounts of money, money we do not have as a city and the federal government would not like to fund. We can use the land for food and for energy. Right . We can begin to actually think about how Food Production in a city can work to actually satisfy the needs of the city as a whole. Were seeing a dramatic revolution here in a city defind by food deserts and poor access to nutritious foods and were seeing small scale agricultural projects start up and could provide jobs, provide food, and then also providing energy threw biomass and a whole host of other things. Detroit can lead in this regard. Lastly, in many of these areas you can tell its not as if nothing is there. Theres a house here, probably a house around the corner. People insuring fact in the 20 square miles im showing you here, 90,000 people live there. These folks have needs, of course, and many cases folks here are older, people of color, people with poor access to mobility, they have poor access to health and services. These folks are isolated. We have to begin to rethink how they can move around in the city. The idea is no one is getting dislocated here. How do we begin to then develop oncall paratransit networks that allow people to get around more easily without requiring a dedicated fixed route bus to come down their street five times a day when one person needs to go to a doctor on the a tuesday. These are things to think about a whole platform of opportunity around areas that in the past have indicated our failure. Right . And so for detroit its all about flipping these liabilities into assets, and were going to continue doing that as we move forward. Thank you. [applause] good morning. My name is shalinivajihala and im here as the founder of refocus partner. I i was going to ask you to picture youre city in the rain and that is not a stretch of imagination for those here in d. C. Imagine what happens to all that water. After it hits your roads. We have walked by puddles. Theyre flash flood warnings in the the sited but picture the water rushing all underneath your streets through warming pipes and headed into Water Treatment plants or as didnt described, straight into our lakes and rivers when the system works way its designed to keep our water clean, to protect us from floods but on days like today when the system fails us, what you see are basements that flood, sewers that back up into communities, and into our water bodies. We need to be able to think about these challenges in different ways. Cities across the country are dealing with this problem. This is not just washington, dc today. Many cities have Infrastructure Systems that are 150 years old or older. They werent designed for the ways were using them today. So my firm leads an Initiative Call the reinvest initiative, a Partnership Among eight cities across the u. S. And leading engineering, legal, and finance firms to rethink how we both design and finance our systems like our water system. So think back on the water system with all the rain thats come in today. And imagine how it works. It works like a giant funnel. Our cities are built to catch the water and rush it out underneath our streets and carry it out to lakes and rivers. Now i want you to picture that city working more like a sponge. Imagine our roads could absorb water. Imagine we could plant street trees or put in wetlands. That actually hold that water in place instead of having it return out at the same time. Rush out at the same time. Thats a very different type of infrastructure. Youre talking about replacing pipes under your streets and old water mains and creeky Water Treatment plants, with tens of thousands of small pieces and parts. Trees, pavement that absorbs water, places to catch and hold water. So think urban bathtubs. What reinvest does is we work with cities directly, as s. W. A. T. Teams to redesign these systems and create portfolios of infrastructure. We have eight City Partners miami beach to hoboken, new jersey, and milwaukee, el paso, they all face the same challenges which is they need to build infrastructure for the next 100 years, and to find ways to pay for it with increasingly strained public budgets how much do we do this . Ill give two examples, one from miami and one frock hoboken. The city of miami beach is a city thats been featured in the news frequently. When you hear about resilience youll find an article on miami beach. Miami beach on a sunny day has flooding that gets up to two feet high. This is surreal. Our team went out there and we couldnt believe it until city officials drove us to different places where there was just water in the roads. Miami beachs problem isnt just flooding. Its not because of rain. The problem is that their sea walls are so old they have sea water pushing underneath the city during high tides and coming up through their sewer systems. Theyre coping well now. And theyre really leading the charge. But they know this cant last forever so were working with them to redesign their sea walls, to think about how you hold up the city differently, but also pay for it differently, and rethinking property taxes and insurance rates in one of the most expensive Insurance Markets in the country. Hoboken, which faces strangely similar changes, was on the front page of the news for weeks after Hurricane Sandy hit. The city at one point had 14 feet of standing water. So hoboken is one square mile. Teeny, tiny, 55,000 people. And shaped like a bowl. It was built for a different time, and the city knows they need to do different things. Were working with hoboken on some of their empty industrial parcels 0 land to think through, how do we combine types of infrastructure across sectors. Not just thinking about rather but looking at where can we build cisterns underground to hold water when the sewers overflow, when it rains and also to combine that with things like parking garages that can serve as flood overflow spaces during periods of really intense rain, like Hurricane Sandy. And in building on that, put things on the surface that create recreational spaces and parks for a city that is incredibly dense. To picture this i want you to think about a layer cake of infrastructure. Not just about building one thing thats important. Its about building whole systems. When you think about a whole system, sort of counterintuitively in order to finance infrastructure were interested in finding multiple ways to pay for the same project, where you can combine parking fees with water system user fees, with attracting corporations to demonstrate technologies in innovation parks. So now picture your favorite science museum, and imagine being abe to showcase for communities, for kids, what resilience looks like for the next 100 years. In a public park. To work with companies to showcase, heres how we can generate electricity from our wasteWater Systems. But what it looks like to turn waste into energy. A lot of our challenges associated with infrastructure and especially with green and resilient infrastructure, is when were successful, in building these systems, its a politicians Worst Nightmare because successing something that doesnt happen. So a storm hit but the community wasnt flood. Thats fantastic for exactly one year and the next year youre fired. What were doing is finding new ways to not just combine these systems, to pay for them differently but working to make sure those successes are clear and visible for the public entities, for the governments working hard to make these changes. The five that it have up here is an illustration of our process. And all of you will find this familiar. On the lefthand side here you see a collection of what a city needs. Cities know their needs incredibly well. They know they need new Water Systems and repave roads at regular intervals, and provide broadband. And City Governments tend to be organized in silos. The transportation office, the broadband office, the education office. And more interestingly, banks tend to think in layers. They want projects where theyre not the only ones investing and you can stack up capital and investors to be able to pay for a single thing. What we at refocus and what our partners do is work to realign systems designed with financing, and our goal is to be able to take what a city needs so imagine your idea of a dream house turn that into a blueprint consistent with the citys priorities, and also help make the leap to a mortgage document. We have a lot of cities with a lot of projects and theyre going into banks with their equivalent of a dream house. And we need help translating those ideas into investable projects. This is not a problem of not enough money. Its certainly not a problem of not enough need. As our challenge is to come bean combine these things to get from idea to action in a way that is clear repeatable. So what we do is like the olympics to are what a city needs every day, and we work not just on the systems design, how to build a sponge, but we also connect that to working with legal experts on how do you design a privatepublic partnership that can deliver 10,000 pieces of infrastructure, not just one Water Treatment plant. And then what are the different ways that you can bring together revenue streams, as congressman delaney mentioned, with user fees and also with savings. Those successes that dont happen. So when my basement doesnt flood, and i didnt collect from the insurance company, how do i catch that money and redirect it to the projects i need . So in short what we do is help cities not just rebuild what they had for the last 100 years, but we aim to get them to that why need for the next hundred. Thank you. [applause] hi. Im getting away with showing a painting or collage because i am part of a new civic philanthropy and were just getting started. So its really exciting to talk to you about what is going on with us. But this is a beautiful piece by an artist named val britton, and she worked with the concept of maps, to map the unknown, to trace our past, and she you can say that she makes the unknown quite beautiful, and i just wanted to use this as a starting point for how were thinking about infrastructure and what we the role we can play at the civic philanthropy and making a change weapon did a scan of the field and there are so many wonderful, amazing experts out there, banks, banging on the doors, trying to make this change. But change is really scary for so many people, and what is scary is the unknown. What we want to do is try to bring together all the people, the partners, the organizations, the cities, the private sector, and making the unknown more legible, to explore this area and to figure out the steps we could take to make these things happen. So one of the thing wes started to look into was improving the rider experience, the general citizens experience of getting around the city. We all know what its like to be unable to hail a cab to wait for the bus that never shows up to never know when the bus is going to show up. We all understand this, and in fact this is one of the greatest inhibitors of people getting to jobs. So were talking about infrastructure creating jobs and infrastructures an enabler of labor markets and jobs and people accessing jobs. So, its a huge underpinning of our economy but one of those things that is under overlooked by conventional transportation as usual. Usually we serve it up. To serve it up with these big agencies, we have to really organize it. Well, frankly, thats just no longer going to work anymore, and people have really unusual schedules, you have people in detroit who just need to go to the doctor once a month, on a tuesday, and in the middle of the afternoon. Other people who are working from home part time. So these schedules are no longer as predictable as usual. So, what is going on now, though, is theres a huge number of participation from the private sector and the public that is really creating the sharing economy. I know thats a buzz word. But what is really amazing is that people are participating. This really has been enabled by technology and smartphones and there is an equity issue with smartphones but also new emerging evidence that of the 72 of americans with smartphones, many of them also rely on smartphones as their own access to the internet. They dont have wifi andy a smartphone to access the internet. So were seeing the glimmer of what can happen and what is going on is on the demand side, no longer the topdown supply side way of looking at things. Its the demands side. How to reduce friction to make things happen, create a platform of options and what is going on in the private sector is taking the lead. What is really amazing is theyre doing this in spite of all the constraints. In fact you have all probably heard about the companies being banned, uber, lift, side car, you name it, being banned from cities. I really think that this is the wrong approach. How can you figure this out, theyre providing a service, a public infrastructure, a Public Service to your citizens, and the way that, yes, challenges everything we know but its actually making people able to get around the city. And i think that that is an area where we have to be courageous, we have to explore the unknown, and i dont think its terribly negative thing to do. I think theres a lot we can figure out together but without but with leaving them out of the conversation that will never happen. So, some of the things were doing to kind of create the environment for those conversations to take place, we want our work to be rooted in evidence so were actually sponsoring a major study, 12,000 person sample size on Public Attitudes on transit. We will be releasing results from the survey through the course of this year. So second thing were doing is really bed in what kind of leadership does it take to make changes happen. Over the last ten years we have seen cities across the country really have be able to lead in innovation, and they have been doing it without a big federal policy push. They have been doing it on the ground with the mayors, the commissioners, figure out and rewrite the playbook how our cities works. So does it take a great sections sector, visionary lead center were interested in figuring that out. Want to create situations where the different sectors come together and actually talk about things. Right enough its the wild west in a way. Its the pioneers who are going out and staking a claim. And when that happens, and theyre also being restrained, theres a lot of competition that is actually negative. Theyre being confined by outdated policy and unable to make progress on updating that policy, and we wanted to create a situation where people can actually come together and talk about these things, so actually on june 10th and 11th were holding a summit in washington on shared use possibility. So the sharing, the operators are working on this municipal leaders, policymakers, coming together to talk about the new solutions that could be working. Were also taking a look at what does exist, the governance, how to make regions stronger through governance, how to define new relationships between the private sector that is taking this leadership path and the existing governance structures hamp kind of relationship do we need, and i think thats something that will be interesting in partnership with chicago later this year. Finally, were really, really interested in changing practice. And so i mentioned earlier that the leaders are rewriting the playbook on these efforts. We think partnerships with these cities, with the private sect juror and trying to demonstrate implement these new ideas is the way to go. We think that right now the pioneers are out there, figuring it out on their own and it takes a Civic Organization to kind of bring people together, combine in the combine the Public Benefit with the private interests and maximize overall benefit. So i hope youll join news our journey. Were just getting started. Thank you for letting me explain Transit Center to you. [applause] connected the downtown to the university of utah, cost 250 million and has created 1. 6 billion in investment in 50 projects and its still ongoing. I want to talk about one of our other lines that just opened up last year that connects or downtown to the airport, and it goes along north temple, which is our main street that goes from the west side, which is one of our communes with the lower performance in our economic indicators, and so we thought. This and it wasnt just about connecting a nice place for the university but how to catalyzes the main street in one of tower communities in one of our communities in need and supporting Small Businesses and connecting major job centers. This line goes from our downtown to our airport, and includes some major private employers but also focuses on Small Businesses. If you guys cant see there, this light rail is in front of the rediguana. Its a family owned business been around for 55 years and one of the Fastest Growing Small Businesses in the country that is located in the cbd. Theyre growing at 17 a year. And chili colorado is really good by the way. But the notion is that in creating this rail, it allowed a whole new market to come in and for us to connect tourists and residents to enjoy the outstanding chili colorado. But for our other Small Businesses, it creates the same opportunities and the fact we connecting job Centers Centers l tubs for Small Businesses. Right now since that line is fairly new, 200 million cost as well. And we propose 1,000 new Housing Units which 550 are under construction. Also, the line in the middle is the new street car line, so under the leadership of mayor becker and the city council and the south Salt Lake City council and the uta, were rebuilding our street car system within Salt Lake City. So this was a 15 million project that came from tiger money and from a match, and apparently it happened pretty quickly. So we identified the right of way in 2009. We secured the tiger grant in 2011 and we had Revenue Service in 2013. So we know how to get things done. So its transformed this community. The sline standards for street car line and snapped stands for South Salt Lake line and sugar house. Sugar house is our Bohemian Community and is now an economic hub in our region. We have had 400 million in private investment, 400,000 square feet of new retail, 300,000 square feet of new office, and a thousand new Housing Units being created in the past four years since we comprised this. So, finally in four Commuter Rail, the front runner, at the bottom, that Commuter Rail is a 600 million project that opened up in 2013, and it really changed how we thought about how our suburbs thought about Economic Development and thought about rail. One of the sweet spots now between Salt Lake City and provo has now become the home to a new campus for adobe, new campus for ebay, and one project alone, 700,000 square feet of new office. So, our suburbs right now are thinking about increased density, Transit Oriented Development and is changing how our regions developing, but also had the catalytic effect of thinking about our downtown hubs in both Salt Lake City and ogden and revitalize them to think about how they can better transform our downtown downtowns and ore hubs. In the end i just want to say that all this investment in infrastructure also does include people, and so what we have done we did a study and found that while we have a great regional system, the majority of the residents of Salt Lake City make shorter trips and we make more frequent trips, but what were priced at a regional rate. So we were able to put in as a city 200,000, partnering with the Utah Transit Authority and create a pass for salt lake residences at the price of 360 a year. At the price of 360 a year. Im so amazed and so proud, and we put a significant amount of staff time into it. Most in what the name should be called. The hive pass. Is what it is. Its created this goal of reducing trips. Increasing ridership and how regional functions and environmental targets. We have sold 1500 of them, and we have a target of about 7,000 so well see this happen. Were specifically outreaching to renters and to lowincome communities to make sure they can do which is. Which brings me to my just final point its great to talk about Economic Development and how its creating jobs and housing. But in the end all this is moot if were not creating economic opportunity. And so one of the best things we have seen and ill tell this quickly we have a guy from gone out of homelessness but was able to secure the funds of 360 a year for a transit pass that was able to connect him from this new house in north temple to his new job at sugar house, and that is what this work is about, and thank you very much. I look forward to talking to you guys. [applause] that was great. Thats exactly i think the kind of conversation we were hoping to tee up. Following the congressman and following the discussion we already had here this afternoon. We intentionally wanted a mix of folks. We want to have a mix of public and private actors because that was one of the common themes we heard throughout the remarks. It does take a bunch of different people to get these things done. Because infrastructure is getting more complex, because its multifaceted, because we have different motivations and different end games it requires a bunch of different people working together to make things happen. But we also really appreciate the fact the National Conversation is very helpful but once we get down to we have to talk about what this means on the ground in u. S. Cities and other places. So i appreciated that part as well. But one thing want to do just to start this is very optimistic conversation which is good, particularly with the gloomy weather, but i think it will help us understand where the challenges are. I want to ask each of you, given you have talk about. What are your biggest headaches, the one thing you wake up and i know i have to deal with that one thing, or just break through this one area my life would be easier and see more success. So start with you just because you finished, eric. What could you change if you could with what youre doing now . Building things faster. And the law that has been we have been great to talk to our federal partners how to streamline our approval processes. And were trying to bundle as much as possible so when in the money shows up were able to build it faster and not wait, plan, get approval, build. So how can we lay out the full system now so that when the investment comes up we capitalize quickly. I think its i think the Biggest Challenges in creating a new culture of working. I think the sharing aspect really calls for collaboration. Crosssector collaboration, civic, private, Public Sector collaboration, really unusual in the last the dead okayeds we have had of supply side transportation. And i find myself in conversations i just think, its not a transaction. We need to work together. I have nothing to give you. I want to work with you. So, i think that really is engendering a new culture of working. I think for us, in detroit, theyre probably two thing that hit on. One is a bit more transactional and the other one at a higher level. First off, of course, gaining access to capital to do many of the things were describing can be a challenge on a good day. As we know, things in detroit are not as good as wed like them to be. But we also recognize there are opportunities to draw in funding and were seeking that through a host of partners. But it is always difficult to illustrate the Value Proposition to potential investor when youre describing things through the slide i showed, about investment in massive vacancy areas, that we know will undergird opportunities for Economic Development and growth and stability and are indirect. The second is a broader issue of the kennedy of open narrative. In detroit the times articulate a story that is not typically told 0, the Positive Side how to utilize the vacant spaces. But we think those spaces are highly relatable to the efforts that are underway in areas like our Central Business district, in our midtown district. Areas where were seeing incredible growth. 14,000 new jobs in greats are downtown. Significant investment overall. Transportation initiatives with the m1 rail line coming into play. So, its what we want to do is not bring everybody down and challenge with the narrative im typically talking about. We want tout pat in real estate to other investments that are necessary to illustrate how these two things support one another. So, the greatest challenges i have two and will take the liberty of putting in two. I find that when talking about infrastructure, were able to do incredible things when you get groups of people trying to solve an actual problem. Final that nothing gets done when its a discussion about an issue. So me pore we can shift from issues to problem solving well see greater success on the ground. The other wish list item i have is to drop a lot of the jargon that dominates the space and i come out of federal government and i can hold my own on acronyms but the bottom line is we need to build things that pay for themselves and create multiple types of value. We need to understand where the money is coming from and how we pay for these. This is something that we have been testing out here, as bruce mentioned at the beginning were trying to redefine what we mean by infrastructure, trying the word doesnt it doesnt mean anything. Theres water, theres transport, those things. When you get down to it they are designed and built differently but, what youre trying to do in your firm is to marry these thing intentionally. Yes. Is that a bigger challenge . Is that because thats how its done . Just new innovation, or by extension, is the way were trying to break it down just aggregating infrastructure . Does that make any sense . I think the opportunities are at the seams of infrastructure system. We have sort of experienced the 50 years where we build the freestanding systems we originally built 100 years ago or 50 years ago. So i think disaggregating the discussions put cities at a dissad advantage because disadvantage dunce allow them to have winwin so when you repave your roads its easier to have pipe for broadband. Its cheaper for the company. So i think aggregation is important but we spend a huge amount of our time in bureaucratic jujitsu, so reminding people, just because it hasnt been done doesnt mean it hasnt been allowed. And small translation. We learned to speak simultaneous translation, speak law and government and engineering and finance and making the ideas accessible. Others on that one . When youre working with folks youre trying to solve other problems. Trying to create opportunity, so the infrastructure isnt the driver of what youre trying its enabling you to do what youre trying to do at the end of the day. Right . Yes. Anyone want to expand on that . Yeah. Actually, i think that were thinking about the growing economy and the planning for the future so new people will be coming and using the infrastructure, stewarding the infrastructure, and i think that the way that were going our firm, the way were thinking about doing it, is this culture change issue. Not a getting into the jargon, creating greater legibility, greater literacy, creating leadership capabilities so you can handle the double discussions without dumbing everything down. I think for us, in detroit, what were trying to do is make sure that the investments we put in place today in many of them are not terribly sexy. Sexy as detroit might be, of course. They will yield significant results down the road for generations in fact. So these are big plays were trying to make. Five, ten, 15year efforts to move things forward does that message resonate in the long term . Folks are looking for immediate relief but long term what we deal with we kind of mediate win this world of immediate si immediacy and then the long term reality. Everybody wants everything tomorrow. A lot of folks in detroit in extreme need and also people in detroit who have extreme expectations, who dont actually live in the need, which is also interesting to balance. People understand that the issues were facing there and in many other cities across the u. S. , these are issues that can be dealt with over time. Theyre going to take generations and one thing we ask yourselves in detroit to think beyond our own block, our own neighborhood to think of the city as large, not just what makes the most sense for you and you have to think about your own time. These things are actually going bear fruit for our children. Not perhaps for ourselves overall, and its just something that people need to wrap their minds around. I would ad just one other piece to this. What we see is an opportunity down to road, given the infrastructure efforts we made work on today, we see that very in sharp contrast based on past issues. Right . And the mid1970s, detroit actually submitted a major federal play for a regional light rail system. Would be fully operational by 1992, the year i graduated from high school. So, that never happened. Because we were of course we lad to seek regional cooperation. One county fell out. We had a state match that deployed a circus train downtown, doesnt connect folks to anything. So we see where detroit is today and then we look at Salt Lake City, denver, we look at all these other cities in which those investments were made. What this made for them from a regional perspective, from prosperity to equity and we know how far we have fallen behind and now we have to surge forward. I look at detroit and i say, 50 years from now, if our economy changes, will we have built our infrastructure in a way that creates a resilient city . Can we think about vacant property rules right now or think about infrastructure right now and change those processes so that we can be dynamic, and so its interesting were looking at each other. I think just in response to what both eric and sam said on the long are term, theres a deep, dark secret with most governments and cities, we lose money today and win we have longterm problems it just means well lose more money. So part of helping communities find solutions, figuring out what theyre spending money on. Cities have the a basement cleanup fund when the sewers back up and theyre not allowed to use the money to repair the water mains. So its not about think can about up certain things 50 years from now. Start with where youre failing now and thats where youll fail worse in the future. I wish i had a basic cleanup fund. So much for optimism. Right. The one common them theme i heard was about partnerships. You actually mentioned that. And its become so clear to us that in our work that its not something that i think we think about Public Private partnerships and leasing the indiana toll road or the parking meter deal but about different ways that public and private and government and nonprofit leaders are coming together to actually solve problems, and the infrastructure stuff is almost derivative of that. Can you anybody want to echo that . How important are the partnerships to delivering things and how different is that from what you used to do . I think the partnerships are imperative and the idea is to stick to the project, and i think that Everyone Wants their project for Different Reasons and thats okay. We dont need to have one common outcome or one common message. The idea in the end is if the Chamber Wants it for Economic Development and the mayor wants it for air quality, who squares, it got built. And everyone is able to use it. So i think thats one of the things that a successful about partnership inside utah, we all just want to see it built. I think for us in detroit theres a sense that over the last few years people have moved beyond the kind of pride of ownership or authorship in something as their own, so i dont think anything or anything much of substance occur if it werent through partnerships in detroit. Youre talking about private and public arrange. S, local and federal and also talking about connections through philanthropy and connection to Community Groups have access to human capital, and were finding those moments of greatest success are when all of those things are brought together. Nothing happens without patter inship. I was thinking about the partnerships on the atomized level. The peer to peer sharing, people being able to share risk and theyre able to reap the rewards for doing that, and in fact on the philanthropy side one thing we decided decided to do was ton operating philanthropy because we wanted to help direct and have input on the design of these projects so people didnt fall back to the way they usually did things. We want to be able to keep them on track on taking risk and being brave, and so these kinds of partnerships i feel are necessary for the new dynamics out there. Its essential. No one right now who can solve these problems alone so we have to do things together. Obvious as that it to you, i dont them thats quite broken through yet. So talk about the partnerships. It is important. And im so interested and going to violate my rule and im all the talking but want to throw it open for folks to ask questions in the time we have left. Identify yourself, your affiliation, and question, and has to end in a question mark and your voice may go up so its a question. My name is james assume walt with the National Association of Railroad Passengers and how do you show the important often times economically existential importance of these problems and showing theyre not simply a nice thing to have or important thing to have but something if we dont invest in the economy, what will exist without it . This came up how do we make infrastructure not about infrastructures sake. Break through the communication, the partnership and what is the most important. I think its finding cat lists catalysts, at devastating at Hurricane Sandy was it woke up a lot of communes to what happens when they dont do something, and there are lot of different catalysts. You dont have to wait for a disaster but pick the moments where a resource i stretched to have a conversation with the community about what their lives would look like in the absence of investment. Has sandy changed the conversation fundamentally on the ground or like the bridge collapse and everybody was excited and it fell off the radar. Its definitely stuck and we have to applaud cities like hoboken who have taken an allhandsondeck approach to theyre reworking everything. The electricity networks, working with hud on rebuild by design as a competition to rework the entire citys water and flood management systems. Theyre working with us. So i think it has stuck and its changeded the both the urgency and also the sense of what is involved. Its not just a one sector problem. I think you just have to sell the wind. Everyday we had a station open up the governor came out, the mayor came out, we all cheered. When the first person bought a hive pass we all cheered. So one cant say the system doesnt work. And its total because its an iterative process. You have to celebrate and artic plate show that every iteration is a win. What was the acting force . What got that done . Your work in Salt Lake City. Really smart people and amazing staff face. Shoutout to them. I told them i hat to do i had to do that, which is also true. Other questions . Rob, i want to direct this to you and maybe to shinpei. I dont know. Sampled some of these evens so i dont know how much has been talked about. Near a situation of enormous needs, some opportunities, and scarce public resources. We have to be able to prioritize, to choose, sometimes within sectors, sometimes across sectors. How do we wasnt even on our radar five or ten years ago, the fact we have to prepare for three and fourfoot increase friday sea levels in the next few decades, which is a whole other set of needs. As you know, ive been struck by the fact we do not have in this messy federal republic of ours a really good analytical transportation infrastructure planning or capital programming process in place. How do we make decisions better in which some needs are viewed as more important than others, and some opportunities more beneficial than others, and what is the role of the federal government in driving states and localities and metropolitan regions to establish these systems . We know there are very few places that have effective analytical and decisionmaking processes about Infrastructure Investments. How do we change and improve that situation . So, im going to take a crack at the nonfederal level. I think that ill let ron deal with that. On the local side, on how to prioritize on a local level, one thing that is interesting is openingness and sharing information and data from the City Government to the public, and this has catalyzed amidessing analysis by just the public. They have an interest in functioning transportation. They want to be able to get around. So, for example, the city bike in new york city recently released a set of data and the Reuben Center did an analysis and showed that during a subway delay there were more trips taken near those subway stations immediately, as soon as the mta released that notice of a delay over text. There were more bikes being taken around the transit stations than in other places and it was only during that time. Not a recurring trip so it wasnt a commuter trip. Just in response to the delay. How does your plan tied into the other planned . I am very fortunate to have these divisions under me. We are having a few different things. I am constantly asking where they connect, how they overlap to worry using the same language, data . Instead of it being one big launch of infrastructure planning effort, how you a line existing efforts and make sure their stake saying the same thing, representing things the same way and having aligned data which i dont see in my work done before. I think that this is exactly what were trying to get. Despite whats going on in washington, there actually is really good stuff going on this is happening all across the country. Youre exactly right that we have super sized challenges, things that we could have predicted. It will come. We are just not seeing that. Is going become from bottom up. Once we start to see all these actions going on, there will be a response. We dont think that we should be doing anything. Obviously one of the only industrialized countries on the planet, that doesnt happen. Its the perfect in the federal government should be doing and directing its resources at, but at time of severe fiscal constraint, when there are these massive challenges we have to focus and prioritize and it has to the bottom of. Question here. Thank you. Retired government engineer. Done critical infrastructure, mostly overseas for about 35 years. Now im retired. Question, one of the biggest returns on investment i see, critical infrastructure, continuity of operations, abilities do things day to day that we have to do and keep the society moving forward. As i think about it, new york and london, very old infrastructure, but very critical to the financial stability. Have we taken any lessons from those cities . As an efficient as they are. Thank you. I would lead off on that and say particularly within the case of the deal are following sandy, the dimension of the resilience conversation obviously just blossoms nationally and definitely landed. Perhaps her is she is not similar to those in new york, the kind of World Financial Center and so on and so forth. It really kind of rotated into an issue of equity and a tremendous challenge to develop a truly resilience city that also has some of the greatest need bread. You have a number you can imagine, they go along with that. I was them off. Here you have a challenge were just slight destruction can begin to actually undermine all lot of the existing systems. Ultimately you could have loss of life of a significant challenges. Will we are trying to see is the way in which, i talked earlier about bundle infrastructure, how can we, as we move forward to all other soft or hard systems, how can we begin to bring these things together succinctly so that those investments are being made to launch new businesses and at the same time support Community Action so that everything that happens along the way develops a much Stronger Network that can keep things going in a time of challenge knowing that there are some folks who will never have the means to escape Something Like that. Basically, transferability. I think you are a great example of being able to translate it within context and having leaders do it in an astute and sensitive way that reflects the community assets. That is actually the imperative. It is really interesting to always be looking for the common challenges office, very contextual. Just to give a very specific example, you know this well, the process after Hurricane Sandy, working with Governor Cuomo to plan for the next hundred years. And within that there was an anecdote. It was from someone at a Cable Company who was describing that the Cable Companies knew where the power was out faster than the Power Companies to. Set top box is blank and the power is interrupted. They start picking up the phone and calling. Sped up operation and was restoration of power. And we talk about partnerships on the open date it is not just public to private the private to private. Industries also live in silos. Many to be able to find those of virginities to create a continuity of operations across sectors. Private industry really is underpinning most of the need and the resource. We have just barely started to scratch the surface. I just want to keep this conversation going. I know we have to move on. Again, more questions are raised more questions. Not a bad thing. It will keep the conversation going. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] and then, while they are getting off the stage, i just want to introduce them the global chief operating officer. As you may know, the multinational engineering in infrastructure with approximately 14,000 employees. What you may not know is how this fits into the conversation i110 today about future and innovation and on that. Connecting different areas of infrastructure, the themes of we just had here on this panel is exactly the right way to close out this week. With that, please join me. [applause] good morning. Well, as ralph mentioned, this is the closing session for infrastructure. Want to take a moment to acknowledge of the individuals and organizations for putting together a terrific week. The speakers we just heard from this morning from our last panel really underscore the importance of this topic. Lets give them a quick round of applause. [applause] when i first spoke with rob, patrick, and carter and myself talked about this opportunity to come here and speak at brookings at the conclusion of the infrastructure week it was probably the easiest decision at to make a long time. To talk about infrastructure, something now we have been doing for close to 130 years, we take great pride in reshaping cities and regions across the globe. We can make to try to advance the conversation about that and offer some perspective in that regard which is a great opportunity. Thank you for that. As you are in a moment ago we plan and design infrastructure. In the past year weve personally to a person is bad timing canada, u. K. , asia, middle east, and major cities across the globe. Where some of those differences are. I am going to a friend that conversation around three key themes, for key themes. The first is technology, second is generational attitudes, the third is delivery and financing, and the fourth, bring it back to the role of government. Something we all face, the onrush of changing technology. Traditionally our business infrastructure has not been a hotbed for technological change. The romans were misled late comer. But today new technologies are becoming more and more common in our business. Advanced materials, for will solar power and look good vehicles. The potential is change how we do business. But to new technologies stand above the rest. The magnitude of their potential effects. One is already with us and the other is in the not too distant horizon. It will not change how we build infrastructure so much as how we use it. The smart phone and the Autonomous Vehicle. Each by itself is revolutionary, and the interaction of the two could be game changer. Today in much of the world i am fairly certain every person in this room has at least once more fun on them right now. This little device is only changing how we use infrastructure. We adjust our driver reached based on real time traffic reformation, purchase a real ticket on as one fund, pay for parking, taxi call on the fly. We can accomplish all these things before, but the sheer ease. Just ask anyone in the taxi business. More than this the smart phone puts the world in your hand kaj and those no spare bits of time which were always an efficient, we now have time to be efficient, whether way for an elevator or riding the metro. We can use those bits of time in new ways. One of the benefits of transit has always been the chance to do something productive with the time spent commuting. But the quality of that time as always been left out. The smart phone has changed how people use this time. And some argue, one factor behind the trend from driving towards transit. Consider this, total vehicle milesperhour in the United States peaked in two dozen seven, a year known for something else, the introduction of the iphone. You the judge. Transit is not yet a viable choice for many americans. Lets test board to that horizon i just referenced, a time when your on the cost of opening up roads to Autonomous Vehicles. This technology can take the most unproductive hour of the day, are committed, and make it an hour to read the map, watch movie, go shopping, all in use my phone. I think you will agree, society will have a tough time saying no to that. Technology is not the only thing changing. So our attitudes. You have all heard the evidence. If you or your people are getting drivers licenses. Cities are cool again, trances use keeps growing. This wave has been building for years and knows no sign of slowing down. These changes are happening overseas as well. In germany one half of the men under 25 used on a car. Now is less than a third. Richard driver for people in the twenties of fallen in several countries. Leading the way of the socalled millenniums, major force beyond what people are calling the sharing economy which is everything from zip car to air being beaten by sharing. These services stern underutilized assets from the Spare Bedroom to go riderless bike into marketable commodities a new. Here is where changing technology and changing attitudes make a merger converge. What major Capital Investment sits unused 90 percent of the time . The car, of course. Its hard to imagine the Transportation Future that looks rather different and today. Using an apple, iphone can i summon an Autonomous Vehicle to take me to my next meeting. Might be my car, might be someone elses baby it happens to be close by. Once it jobs may of the parks itself committee picks up another passenger. This may be 15 years off, but i bet people are already thinking about it. The consequences for our industry is not yet clear. When everyone has their own chauffeur even further from the city or will people deemphasized car ownership in favor of and on the man mall . Will this lead to other lifestyle choices that go with low rates of car ownership like living in denser, what will never hurts . If so, the infrastructure we invest in will need to change. Before we get to that it is important to recognize. Our existing stock of an infrastructure will always need to be maintained. From interstate highways to Water Systems to the power grid to the communication links, we have fallen behind. Technology is not going to save us. To my knowledge and i am in this business there is no and about the fix a bridge. The new infrastructure rebuilding the 21st century may, in fact all look different from what we build the 20thcentury. The next wave of investment focuses on supporting a dancer, more urban pattern of living. Not too many new highways. Fewer singlefamily homes and more vertical construction. Water and Power Infrastructure help us go and were then upward instead of the work. Sustainability will be an nonnegotiable objective. No matter what we build we will have to handle the world of higher sea levels and more powerful storms. It is interesting. Other countries like at our decentralized system of and for structure planning and wonder how it can never work. It has challenges, but it also has a strength, and we are saw that this morning. Different places and try different things. Each city is its own low petrie dish of experimentation. As workplace experiments, the other places look and learn. As an example we never adopted in interNational Policy on my real. But a few cities tried it and other cities like gasol. By sharing work here in washington d. C. Other cities are following suit. So as robber was talking about earlier, how we finance and deliver infrastructure, innovative things are happening. We are all encouraged by what congressman delaney at the site, but theyre mostly happening someplace else. A generation ago it was not a big gap in our infrastructure was finance, build, and operated here in the u. S. Forces other industrialized nations. A quite simple molto government collected taxes and allocated funding. Private firms bit, design, and built the next project and the government was the operator. Pretty standard. In the u. S. This is still mostly housed on except, of course, we are doing fewer projects every year. What once existed at all levels of government does not exist anymore in both parties. To support our reasonable level of Infrastructure Investment has broken down without anything to replace it. These consequences are serious. I know everybody here understands that and are getting worse every year. While not belabor the point. You have heard it too many towns of four. With financing infrastructure taxes have been on the decline in other countries, but they have been willing to build a new financing system in place. We have yet to adopt that. User financing, fares or rates is in recently acceptable but preferable. Mexico to china. Most new highspeed roads are built as toll roads. It is the normal baby user financing has advantages. And it goes beyond just raising money. Helps allocate resources and rational way. If a project serves a real demand, the market will find it. Have come however, the market is not interested maybe that tells us something about the project. Look at the decline for retrenchment in the construction around toll roads. We all hate congestion, but that is different from how much were willing to pay to avoid it. User financing should be encouraged, but it is not the panacea. In particular it is not well suited to the task of restoring and maintaining the infrastructure we already have. This bread and butter were cost many tens of billions annually, and it cannot realistically be financed with tolls. Broadbased funding like we have with the gas tax, is and always will be a necessity. It remains the big regional to locks. Where there were talking of a building new facilities are repairing old ones, new methods of projects delivery can make a big difference. Unfortunately we still like a bit behind in this country. The dominant practice here is what we call design, build, build where one team designs a project in the projects sponsors opera at the end of that today. We talked earlier about silos. This is a perfect case were traditional methods in this country are very much silo. What is happening is a move toward design build, an incremental step the started about ten years you were you married contractor and a designer and then develop the project in concert. You eliminate some of that fraction of cost and the fictional town occurs in developing and silos. That improves schedule, cost, and the risk. Again, we have heard a bit about that throughout the week. Here is where one team could possibly do everything. Government will in this case is to set standards for performance and then pays overtime as people use the facility. Lets be honest, some agencies, some governments throughout the country are still skeptical of these new practices. They are free to give up control i believe this fear is not warranted, but it is true that these methods call upon government to exercise control, but in a new way. Under the old system the project sponsor could dictate every design choice, however small. Very handson and could add a lot of time to the process. With new methods the project sponsor still retains control, but that control is expressed your performance standards that the private sector has to figure out all the details. This allows government to focus its energy on true matters, Public Policy, setting objectives, establishing a budget, demanding performance, and enforcing rules that it the most of the competitive marketplace. Once these decisions are made the delivery process becomes less inherently governmental and more amenable to efficiency driven by the private sector. I firmly believe that if our public agencies adopt the contract in practices that we increasingly see as commonplace overseas from london, australia, and elsewhere, we could get more infrastructure for our money your home. Let me conclude with a couple of thoughts. By themselves these reforms will not solve our infrastructure deficit, but they can give us more bang for the buck. Perhaps this can lead to Greater Public confidence, every dollar we invest will return the benefits and be managed with the utmost care. This could be the key element in convincing at whatever level of government that Infrastructure Spending is vital and needs to be paid for by all this. Given the ways our society will change in the future and the challenges we see in building infrastructure, it is vital to keep was growing and thriving as a country. The time to act is now. Thank you. [applause] that is great. Thank you, very, very much. A lot of things you may not expect to hear from a large engineering firm. Thank you for reinforcing that. Before i close i want to say a quick thankyou to the team had brookings you did an awful lot of work on the whole week. If you have done anything, youre probably seen them running around. If you see him, pick him up. Thank you all for coming out here today on a rainy friday. I really thought this was the conversation we want to get into we just added to scratch the surface. One more before we adjourn. We highlighted a bunch of projects here today, a lot of things that were specific, particularly with the panel. We did it all throughout. I think that if were going to keep doing, this is what we will spend time on over the next year , may be leading up to infrastructure 2015. As we travel around the country, as we talk to public and a private, fund profit, Corporate Leaders all across the country this is the author looking for from us. They want to know whos doing what, tell me exactly the innovations that are out there. What can we learn from these people . They talk to get that done . Give me the specifics. No one is waiting anymore. We see a lot of energy, a lot of vitality. We heard from your for your reason. This is the time to get things done. Scene and from folks around the country. A few examples. Well spend the next few months soliciting more. If you have ideas and then toss. We will start to build this clearing else. Those lessons can be shared so that we can do this network approached, the Partnership Approach so we talked about so people can learn from one another. We do believe that americas infrastructure needs are daunting, but i dont think that they are insurmountable, nor is washington this function an excuse excuse for inaction. From a believe our state and cities, to pollen areas and a pilot to the private public civic institutions that lead them to have the talent and as we have seen dramatic creativity to move this country for in this area and in others. We absolutely believe now is the time deduces of the weakest are building for the next 100 years. Thank you for coming. Appreciated. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] can you remember who first influenced you to just think about issues, think about government . Well, my father and mother. I was so impressed i put it in a book called 17 traditions, how they raise their poor children, two boys and two girls and a factory town in new england. It was conversation around the dinner table. There is now looking at tv or listening to radio or, you know, looking like this. We talked and they challenged us in a nice way. Questions and kneele bus and jilted us. The bottom line is freedom requires civic responsibility. You cant just say i want freedom. Most people think theyre free because there personally free, you know, they can buy their own clothes to make their own friends, go wherever they want, you know, listen to whatever music and made whenever they want. That does not mean they are sickly free. And that is what they emphasize. You have to engage in democracy. My dad used to say,. Ralph naders and then added it 00 on cspan q a. Cspan2 providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate. Every weekend book tv now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by the cabletv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch as in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. On todays washington journal we talked about the state of the u. S. Housing market with the Washington Post financial reporter. As vicepresident of reality track which tracks home sales and foreclosures. The conversation is 45 minutess q a. Is Dina Elboghdady host financial reporter with the Washington Post covering the housing industry. What is going on on capitol hill when it comes to the housing industry . Not just capitol, but washington as well. Washington as well . Guest there has been a lot going onast guest there has been a big bill moving through the senate, the Senate Banking committee, to overhaul fannie mae and freddie mac, the mortgage giants. Mac. Yesterday the Senate Banking committee had a vote 139, they passed it, but it is probably not going anywhere. While it got bipartisan majority, they did not get the central liberal core of the Banking Committee that they really needed in order to push this to the senate floor. Thinksyone pretty much it is stalled for now, but i think this is an issue that will keep coming up over and over. All, if it passed the committee but you are saying it will not go anywhere. Worst of all, what would it have done to fannie and freddie . Guest it would have dismantled them over a fiveyear per over a fiveyear period and it was the major point was to shift the risks of mortgage lending from the taxpayers to the private sector. Because of course danny and freddie were taken over by the government in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis and they have been in the governments control since then and part of the problem was that even though they were profitable for many years during the housing bust their wealth overwhelmed them. They didnt have enough capital so the government had to step in and take them over and they have been under government troll control ever since. Host also joining us is daren blomquist. Guest we are a company that collects real estate data Public Record real estate data. A lot of people know us for collecting foreclosure data. We actually have people who go out and collect that from counties across the country but we also collect all other types of real estate data from tax and Deed Mortgage type of data as well as what we call home facts data. Anything you want to know about a house that might affect the value of the house. Host so how would you describe the health of the u. S. Housing market . Guest i would say we are kind of in a bid of jekyll and hyde housing market. Theres a lot of good signs when you look at a specially home es