Why Does JHU's Twenty First Century Cities Initiative Focus on Urban Economic Growth?

Johns Hopkins ranks as #10 or so in the United States among universities and is world renown in medical care and public health.   In this post, I will argue that an unintended consequence of being so focused on health care and public health is that there are other key research areas (such as the private sector’s role in stimulating economic growth) that receive too little attention.  My Center’s sole focus is to balance this asymmetry.

While I am well aware that we are in the midst of a pandemic, this blog post will focus on the fundamental importance of major universities investing in understanding the root causes and consequences of urban economic growth and the flip; the root causes and consequences of urban poverty.   

The 21st Century Cities Initiative at Hopkins is an Interdisciplinary Research and Outreach center that was originally directed by Sociologists. I am a fan of interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration but I seek to take this center in a new direction.

Given that the Bloomberg School of Public Health has hundreds of faculty studying various issues related to the supply of public health for urbanites, how does my 21CC find our niche?

Here are the core questions that my center works on and almost no other scholars at Hopkins are working on these essential questions.   While I focus on Baltimore here, these same issues arise for many cities in the U.S and around the world.  They all related to the urban poverty trap. 

1. private sector job growth in cities such as Baltimore and cities around the United States.  Why does Baltimore feature so few superstar companies? Why hasn’t Baltimore and other post-industrial cities had more success helping small businesses to thrive?

2.  What local and state rules of the game facilitate capital investment and local private sector job growth?

3. What role does local quality of life improvements with respect to crime reductions and pollution reductions and climate resilience play in attracting college educated people to move to the area and remain there even once they have children?

4.  What new rules of the game are needed to attract new commercial and residential real estate investment in cities such as Baltimore?

5. What role can better transit infrastructure that connects Baltimore to Philly and DC play in helping Baltimore thrive?

6. If Baltimore stages a comeback, will the urban poor (many of whom are African-American) share in this prosperity or will gentrification hurt their quality of life? What are their rights in a new Baltimore?

7. What role does political competition play in stimulating a city to have a greater menu of leaders and policies to choose from?  I am fan of competition if cities  such as Baltimore had a competitive Republican Party would the city be better governed?  The field of urban political science needs a major investment of new talent. I would like to work at a University with 5 of such empirical scholars!

Do you see how my focus differs from the classic Public Health focus?  How do we use free markets to help poor people to achieve the American Dream?  This is a very different vision of core research than what I see being supplied by my colleagues (and rivals) at Bloomberg’s School of Public Health.  

Within 21CC, we are a diverse intellectual community. My team has different views about how to build great cities and we continue to debate these ideas.  I am open to all ideas as long as they are grounded in data and logic.  My colleagues know that I have several old school University of Chicago muscles that they do not share!

I am trying to create something new that doesn’t exist at Hopkins or any other University.  Wharton’s Real Estate Zell center gets close but they do not really delve into the details of urban political economy and the governance challenge.

In our 2021 book; Unlocking the Potential of Post Industrial Cities we present our vision in depth. Read Chapter One here.