Featured Books

Urban Edited by Nancy Pindus, Howard Wial, and Hal Wolman, and published by the Brookings Institution Press, Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects Vol. II was published in 2009. The book is the second in a series stemming from the annual Conference on Urban and Regional Policy hosted by GWIPP, the Brookings Institution, and the Urban Institute. The goal of this book is to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. What can we say about what works, what doesn't, and why? What does this knowledge and experience imply for future policy questions? The authors take a fresh look at several different issues (e.g., education, economic development, land use) and conceptualize how each should be thought of. Once the contributors have presented the essence of what is known, as well as the likely implications, they identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy. You can purchase it here.

Edited by Nancy Y. Augustine, Michael Bell, David Brunori and Joan M. Youngman, Erosion of the Property Tax Base: Trends, Causes, and Consequences was published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2009. The chapters in this book provide analyses of recent property tax trends, examine several responses to the increasing importance of residential property, estimate the extent of property tax base erosion and its effects, and other related topics. The erosion of the property tax base raises serious concerns about the future health of our federal system of government and the continued ability of local governments to protect what de Tocqueville called America’s passion for popular sovereignty. You can purchase the book here.

Urban Edited by Margery Turner, Howard Wial, and Hal Wolman, and published by the Brookings Institution Press, Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects Vol. I was published in 2008. The book is the first in a series stemming from the annual Conference on Urban and Regional Policy; hosted by GWIPP, the Brookings Institution, and the Urban Institute. Read more about the book here.

Clarence Stone, GWIPP Research Professor, is the subject of the book Power in the City and the Politics of Inequality, edited by Marion Orr and Valerie C Johnson with foreword by Dianne Pinderhughes. The book collects ten classic articles and essays by Stone to create a succinct reader in urban politics. It encompasses theoretical work on urban political power; examinations of political leadership in community politics; considerations of race, class, and political power in Atlanta; and writings on the politics of social reform and urban regeneration. These pieces provide a model for integrating empiricism with theory, offer Stone’s own reflections on his theory, and demonstrate the evolution of his thought. The book may be purchased through University Press of Kansas or Amazon.

Pat Atkins, GWIPP Research Professor, edited (along with David K Hamilton) Urban and Regional Policies for Metropolitan Livability. The book provides a concise, up-to-date, and systematic treatment of the problems and issues involved in urban and regional policy concerns. Each policy chapter is written by a respected expert in the area, and the book covers all the key policy issues that confront contemporary metropolitan areas, including transportation, the environment, affordable housing, crime, employment, poverty, education, and regional governance. Each chapter outlines an issue, which is followed by current thinking on problem diagnosis and problem solving, as well as the prognosis for future policy success. The book is available for purchase at M.E. Sharp.

Conference Participation

2010

November 12, GWIPP and its partner on the Implementing Regionalism project, RW Ventures, held an all-day conference at the City View Room on the GW campus November 12th to discuss the papers that the project has drafted. The project, funded by the Surdna Foundation (as was the conference) is designed to review the theoretical and empirical literature on key aspects of the regional economic development process and draw out the implications of what is known from this literature for economic development practice. The draft papers the project has produced that were discussed at the meeting included ones on regional systems, regional economic clusters, deployment of human capital, innovation, spatial efficiency, and governance. The purpose of the meeting was to review the papers and receive comments on the implications for practitioners from a diverse group of researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Attendees included members of the White House Domestic Policy Council, the Brookings Institution, the Upjohn Institute, the International Economic Development Council, the National League of Cities, the Urban Institute, the Council on Competitiveness, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, Cleveland State University, and the University of Buffalo.

November 20, Policy Research Scholar alumnus Gregory D. Squires presented at the Case Western Reserve Social Justice Institute’s launch event, “Social Justice, Race, and Profiling: An Intergenerational Think Tank,” Clevealnd, Ohio.

November 18, GWIPP Research Professor David Brunori served as a moderator of the program for National Tax Association on Current Fiscal Crisis in the States.

November 4-6, Michael Wiseman and Theresa Anderson attended the Thirty-second Annual Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) in Boston. Wiseman is coauthor of two papers presented at the conference: The SSDI Benefit Offset Experiment: Landing the Pilots (sponsored by the Social Security Administration) and Merging Survey and Administrative Data: What Do We Learn? (sponsored by the Economic Research Service at USDA). Michael also acted as a discussant on a session entitled “Signals, Incentives, and Program Rules: Drivers of Disability Insurance Program Growth.”

October 28, GWIPP Research Professor David Brunori attended a Forum on Federalism sponsored by the GW Law School.

October 8, Gregory D. Squires presented as the 11th Annual Lewis Mumford Lecture, Center for Social & Demographic Analysis, University at Albany – State University of New York.

October 5, GWIPP Research Professor David Brunori gave the keynote speech to the Virginia Municipal League annual conference in Hampton, VA.

September 27, GWIPP Research Professor David Brunori gave the keynote address to the Tax Foundation annual conference in Washington.

September 26-30, Michael Wiseman and Theresa Anderson (a GWIPP research assistant and TSPPPA MPP student) attended the 50th Annual Workshop of the National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics (NAWRS) in Los Angeles. Both Wiseman and Anderson served on the NAWRS program committee. Anderson presented a paper entitled The Interaction of the Unemployment Insurance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the Context of the Great Recession. She is currently an intern at the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Anderson’s NAWRS paper was prepared under ERS auspices as background for seven-state project to study interaction between unemployment insurance and SNAP benefit use in the current recession.

August 16, Gregory D. Squires presented “Integration Exhaustion, Race Fatigue, and the American Dream” at the Thematic Session: Housing Rights, American Sociological Association in Atlanta, Georgia.

August 16, Charis E. Kubrin, Gregory D. Squires, Steven M. Graves, and Graham C. Ousey. “Does Fringe Banking Exacerbate Neighborhood Crime Rates? Social Disorganization and the Ecology of Payday Lending,” American Sociological Association, Atlanta, Georgia.

August 14, Gregory D. Squires presented “There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina,” at the Presidential Panel: Rebuilding Society after Natural and Social Disasters, American Sociological Association in Atlanta, GA.

July 21, GWIPP Policy Research Scholar alumnus Gregory D. Squires presented "Segregation and Subprime Lending" at "Fair Housing 2010: A Time to Act" 2010 National Fair Housing Policy Conference given by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in New Orleans, Louisiana.