The Program on Innovation in Infrastructure is a major research program designed to shed light on significant policy challenges facing all level of governments with emphasis on research questions that occur at the nexus of traditional academic disciplines and conventional policy domains. The Program on Innovation in Infrastructure is based on the belief that federal, state, and local policymakers urgently need rigorous empirical analysis of issues that cut across infrastructure systems including transportation, communications, and the energy grid.
Our research agenda bridges conventional specialties to understand four cross-cutting issues:
Privatization: its changing role in infrastructure provision and operation;
Performance Measurement: its emergence in project and budgetary evaluations, both before and after project selection;
Economic Efficiency: its growing use in project evaluation, particularly dependence on cost-benefit and related economic techniques to justify infrastructure projects; and,
Inter-generational communities: the infrastructure needs and challenges in creating new and retrofitting existing communities to better serve the needs of residents of all ages.
Today, the US faces major challenges in developing, maintaining, and financing physical infrastructure systems. Policy decisions about these choices will ripple across the economy and through the lives of families and business owners, with profound, long-term consequences for economic welfare, equity, environmental quality, and national security. The rigorous empirical research for which the Urban Institute is known can help shed new light on controversial policy choices.
In April 2012, Living Cities asked the Urban Institute to study the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, and the HUD Regional Planning Grants specifically, as a way to understand how the federal government could break down "silos," institutional or political barriers to cooperative and collaborative efforts. The research team reviewed key documents and conducted in-person interviews with personnel at federal agencies as well as organizations leading the regional planning grant projects in five case sites. These findings suggest that federal efforts can, in fact, contribute to breaking down silos both within the federal government and at the regional level.
In April 2012, Living Cities asked the Urban Institute to study the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, and the HUD Regional Planning Grants specifically, as a way to understand how the federal government could break down "silos," institutional or political barriers to cooperative and collaborative efforts. The research team reviewed key documents and conducted in-person interviews with personnel at federal agencies as well as organizations leading the regional planning grant projects in five case sites. These findings suggest that federal efforts can, in fact, contribute to breaking down silos both within the federal government and at the regional level.
Although public parks play a vital role in Americans' health and quality of life, they are currently facing a funding crisis. In response, the Urban Institute, the National Recreation and Park Association, and their partners hosted a roundtable that explored ways to finance urban and metropolitan parks. Experts discussed urban parks' largest challenges-including maintaining enormous amounts of land, serving a changing constituency, and addressing competition for public funds-and offered possible solutions, such as charging visitor fees, forming new partnerships, and increasing donations. Future research might focus on issues of equity, fiscal viability, and outcome development. This report summarizes those proceedings.
A multidimensional research initiative spanning America's fragile infrastructure systems debuts today at the Urban Institute with transportation planning expert Sandra Rosenbloom as its director.
Funding and investing in infrastructure are not only about finding adequate resources to meet the demands of citizenry, but rather requires understanding of how infrastructure fits into the broader functions of government. This brief examines the key role of pricing infrastructure projects and how the total cost of a project (including lifetime maintenance costs) should be included in funding decisions. Current federal and state policies often encourage new building rather than maintenance and care of existing infrastructure. The role of public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects is also sometimes more about political rather than economic considerations. The author presents options to better coordinate infrastructure financing and payments across levels of government.
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