A Tale of Two Super Bowls

The start of 2023 would be incomplete without the annual Super Bowl of speeches, the State of the Union address, which President Biden delivered on Tuesday. He underlined the administration’s achievements around the labor market and legislative milestones that position the nation for technological and infrastructural advancement. Below, Senior Principal Brandon Pollak unpacks these topics and other takeaways from the President’s message. Then, there is the real Super Bowl. We know the President and First Lady Jill Biden are avid Philadelphia Eagles fans. But, who will you be rooting for on Sunday? Will the Eagles, Kansas City Chiefs, or Rihanna be the big winner?

We know most of our own team will take some time to watch the big game between the many projects we have in the works. The Cityfi team is approaching the finish line of the U.S. Census Bureau’s The Opportunity Project (TOP), having built the Grantee Success Toolkit for federal grant program administrators. In Ohio, we are collaborating with the City of Dublin and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission to foster regional connectivity and safe mobility outcomes. Also well underway, the Open Mobility Foundation’s (OMF) convening series is exploring the organization’s continuing role in digital infrastructure and equipping the OMF with a strategic and actionable future roadmap. We are also excited to showcase Cityfi’s Social Impact Calculator as well as our curb infrastructure siting tool, both of which are enhancing clients’ data-driven decision-making.

Last, but not least, if cozying up with a thought-provoking book or diving into the latest stories on the urban landscape piques your interest this mid-February, check out Associate Max Lelu’s reflection on the Cityfi book club’s latest choice, Longpath, and the “What We’re Reading” section below. Are you curious to learn more about anything in this newsletter or discover how Cityfi could help your team? We would love to talk with you, so please reach out!

The State of the Union

By Brandon Pollak

The State of the Union was lively on Tuesday night as President Biden touted his accomplishments over the past year. In 2022, he signed several major pieces of legislation into law that added an additional five million jobs to the economy. A large part of his speech focused on his accomplishments of lowering the unemployment rate and creating 800,000 manufacturing jobs. He also displayed his ambitious economic agenda, with industrial policy design written to strengthen manufacturing, accelerate a green energy transformation, create jobs, and ensure American technological leadership over China.

Here is the latest from President Biden’s State of the Union Address on technology and infrastructure:

The Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed in November 2021 contained around $400 billion in green-energy spending, including tax credits for green-energy producers and purchasers of electric vehicles (EVs). His administration plans to deploy 500,000 EV charging stations across the country built by thousands of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) workers.
The CHIPS and Science Act, which Congress passed in August 2022, provided more than $50 billion to encourage manufacturers of semiconductors to build factories in the United States and promised about $170 billion for research into technologies of the future. Intel’s planned semiconductor factory outside of Columbus, Ohio on a thousand acres – “literally a field of dreams'' – which he stated will create 10,000 new jobs, was front and center. The jobs he references will average up to $130,000 a year, and many won’t require a college degree. Enhancing regional innovation is a major component of the legislation. In December, Congress authorized $500 million in funding as “the first major downpayment” for new hubs.
These two pieces of legislation built upon the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which President Biden signed into law in November 2021. Over 20,000 projects have received funding. He showcased one, the Brent Spence Bridge in Kentucky over the Ohio River, that badly needed repairs. One of the nation's most congested freight routes carrying over $2 billion worth of freight every day across the Ohio River. President Biden stressed the importance of replacing lead pipes in ten million homes, 400,000 schools, and child care centers, making access to connectivity for all Americans a priority in his economic agenda, and establishing new electric grids that are able to weather major storms and prevent forest fires.

Small business growth has been on the rise the last two years with ten million Americans filing applications to start a business. That included 5.1 million in 2022 and 5.4 million in 2021. Entrepreneurship has a track record of growth during tough and uncertain times. We saw major startup communities like New York City really take off in the wake of the economic collapse in 2008.

Notably, Biden became the first President to call for banning non-compete agreements in a State of the Union address, which he advocated for during the campaign. Non-competes have been a thorny issue for entrepreneurs and can hamper job mobility for tech workers. In January, the FTC proposed a rule to ban non-competes and estimated that workers' earnings would grow nearly $300 billion per year if the rule was implemented.

The Opportunity for Grantee Success

By Mahreen Alam and Kyle Ragan

The Opportunity Project (TOP) is an innovation program led by Census Open Innovation Labs (COIL) in the U.S. Census Bureau that was founded in 2016 and is now scaling across federal and local governments. TOP brings together technologists, government and communities to rapidly prototype digital products using federal open data. To date, thousands of individuals, hundreds of organizations, and more than thirty federal agencies have participated in TOP. The Cityfi team is participating in the Helping Communities Access Infrastructure Grant Funding Sprint. Our team has taken the lead on developing detailed grantee personas and their associated user journeys. Through careful analyses and research, we have developed The Grantee Success Toolkit that is geared toward federal grant program administrators. This product will be showcased at the TOP Summit on February 22. More information about TOP can be found at opportunity.census.gov.

Dublin, Ohio Explores Curb Technology Pilots

By Sarah Saltz

As part of a broad curb management planning effort run by the City of Dublin, Ohio’s Division of Transportation and Mobility, Cityfi is helping identify, vet, and onboard curb technology vendors to help solve some of the City’s curb challenges via pilots. Like many cities across the country, Dublin’s curbs are experiencing increased pressure and demand and the City sought to ensure safe pedestrian, cyclist, and driving conditions. The City also wants to address a lack of on-street parking, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve commercial loading behavior such as double parking and blocked crosswalks. While technology vendors are pioneering curb solutions to these problems, the curb management technology ecosystem is constantly evolving as curb needs expand. From computer vision cameras, lidar, and sensors that monitor in real time to infrastructure-less solutions that predict behavior at the curb, us Cityfiers love navigating the wide world of curb technology vendors. We worked with our City partners to pilot technologies for both diverting drivers to off-street parking and to organize on-street parking. Now that Dublin has launched the first phase of pilots, we’re excited to evaluate progress, assess the extent to which the piloted technology helps achieve its goals, and make the decisions about next steps given Dublin’s unique curb context, priorities, and challenges.

Strategy and Action: Creating a Roadmap for the Open Mobility Foundation’s Future

By Camron Bridgford and Nicole Davessar

During 2022 and 2023, Cityfi is devising a two-year strategic plan and action agenda for the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF), a non-profit organization that brings together public and private sector stakeholders to develop and promote technology used by commercial mobility service providers and governments that manage the public right-of-way. The strategic plan and action agenda serve as the final deliverables of the OMF’s Digital Infrastructure Convening Series, which is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Convening Series is intended to define the future role of the OMF in advancing digital infrastructure, as well as generate a renewed vision and mission for the organization. To develop the strategic plan and action agenda, the Convening Series focuses on engaging a diverse set of key stakeholders and involved conducting in-depth analysis of the organization’s history and other organizational case studies in order to garner the necessary inputs to a roadmap for the OMF’s future over the next two, five, and ten years.

The Digital Infrastructure Convening Series comprises two in-person convenings – the first which took place in October 2022 and the second which will occur in March 2023 – as well as fifteen individual and group interviews and a review of more than fifty organizational documents. The first convening in Chicago gathered more than fourteen subject matter experts and the OMF’s leadership to discuss “the art of the possible,” including what the organization’s overarching vision for and impact on mobility and digital infrastructure should be and how the OMF can structure itself to support this mission. This gathering was followed by the completion of a Policy and Roadmap Review, which integrated the outcomes from the first convening with the document review and interviews conducted to generate key findings that will shape both the second convening and the foundation of the strategic plan. The second convening will focus more heavily on tactics, including specific actions needed to help the OMF drive toward its overall vision and mission, as well as the partnerships, metrics, resources and timelines needed to support implementation of this critical work.

Throughout the Digital Infrastructure Convening Series, the OMF has also regularly engaged a steering committee of experts and leadership to help shape the desired outcomes and conversations of these convenings. Final drafts of the strategic plan and action agenda are anticipated by June 2023. They will articulate the organization’s goals and actions as well as provide staff and leadership with a nimble roadmap to help the OMF make decisions in future years, despite the likely changes that will continue to take place in the mobility and digital infrastructure spaces.

Electrifying the Home: Making Decisions with Cityfi’s Social Impact Calculator

By Chelsea Lawson

Increasingly, cities and even individuals are thinking about the wide-ranging impacts of their decisions. What impact will my choice have on my finances? On my well-being? What does my choice mean for the environment at large? Or for social equity?

For a few years now (and as discussed in several blog posts), Cityfi has been working on a framework to model investment decisions based on their comprehensive social impact. We have had the honor of getting to do this for public entities, including the Miami Department of Public Works and the Michigan Department of Transportation.

As the lead designer of the tool, it is also personally near and dear to my heart. So, when I found myself equivocating on a home investment decision, I turned to the framework for guidance.

Here is the decision: My husband and I currently have a gas stove and oven (collectively called a “range”). Over the past few years, I have been made aware of the negative health effects of gas ranges and indoor pollution, and we have a one-year-old. On the other hand, we live in Southern California where we can usually keep the door or windows open. We are both environmentalists and generally think that electrification is good for society, but there are nuances there, like the electricity source and the efficiency of using electricity for heat. It is unclear whether the investment increases home value or not. Etc. etc.

Even if you face a similar decision, the specifics of your life, preferences, and values will differ. As such, in this version of our Social Impact Calculator, I represented the numerical values with interactive sliders. You can see the explanation of each category, decide the score for yourself, and see whether the net result is positive (go for it) or negative (not worth it).

Here is the live tool. We would love to hear any thoughts or questions and will have more updates in the future about applications of the tool for our Cityfi clients.

Developing a Curbside Infrastructure Siting Tool

By Sarah Saltz

One of our favorite parts of the work we do here at Cityfi is convening the public and private sectors to encourage shared understanding, build coalitions, and further innovation and dialogue. As part of our mobility and electrification work, we developed a curb infrastructure siting framework and tool to generate recommendations for the optimal locations for any curb furnishings and infrastructure. We used this framework and tool to help one of our clients identify sites on which to deploy public charging infrastructure to promote equitable electric mobility. In developing this tool, our goal was to help our client bring data-driven location recommendations to municipalities to engage in deeper and more specific conversations about needs and opportunities at the curb.

Our team used the tool to develop both macro and micro siting recommendations. To identify broader corridors with high demand for public charging infrastructure, we analyzed certain travel and demographic patterns such as commercial density and vehicular and foot traffic. Then we layered on features of the prioritized corridors that would make a location more or less desirable based on unique client criteria. This includes whether the site is in an area designated as a priority by the city or within an area designated for reinvestment as a disadvantaged community. As the last step, we looked at the potential parcels at a granular level to develop a more specific recommendation for infrastructure placement.

Highlights from the Heartland

By Nicole Davessar

With representation from Cityfi’s team and clientele in Columbus, Ohio, Partner Karina Ricks and Associate Nicole Davessar recently traversed the capital to discuss and explore opportunities ranging from public-private partnerships and civic innovation to federal funding and mobility. Visiting the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), one of our public sector clients, and our friends at Smart Columbus was a highlight. We were thrilled to collaborate with them to organize and leverage federal funding opportunities through a coordinated regional effort and to hear about the City of Columbus’s ambitious plans for electric charging equipment deployment. On Wednesday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that the Ohio Rail Development Commission will apply for Federal Railroad Administration funding to study Amtrak passenger rail expansion to connect Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton. Cityfi is thrilled for Central Ohio to take this significant first step and looks forward to being an advisory partner to the region in the months ahead.

Electrifying the Nation: Promoting Uptime in EV Charging

The EV charging industry is poised to evolve rapidly in the upcoming decade, especially given the recent $5 billion investment in the NEVI Program following funding as part of President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. However, as EV charging technology scales, issues of system downtime have provoked increasing concern. Prospects of malfunctioning or broken chargers render EV users with “charge anxiety” on the road, as users are uncertain of whether they will be able to successfully access a charge point and continue onwards with their trip.

On February 21 at 12pm PT, join us for a virtual workshop and discussion hosted by Urban Movement Labs with moderation by Cityfi Partner Alexander Kapur and support from JOLT, Siemens, ChargerHelp!, and the City of Los Angeles. The event will be centered on challenges associated with maintaining EV uptime, recognizing charging station reliability as an equity issue, and developing approaches for the inception of a more robust and dependable EV charging network across the nation. Save your seat now by registering here!

Safe Streets…and Beyond

By Karina Ricks

Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced over $800 million of awards to 500 communities across the country under the discretionary Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. This is the first installment of a historic $5 billion program aimed at eliminating roadway deaths.

This is no small feat. Nearly 43,000 people were killed in traffic crashes in 2021 - a 16-year high and a sad reversal of what had been a steady downward trend.

Wisely, the vast majority of the awards are for communities large and small to develop comprehensive safety plans. It will be interesting to see, however, how many plans will be of the traditional approach - lines on a map identifying high crash corridors, intersections and high risk vulnerable populations - and how many will go beyond mere planning to truly transformative structural changes in the way safety is thought about and delivered.

Such integrated and holistic thinking would be in line with USDOT’s National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS). The strategy is a holistic approach - recognizing that it will take more than street redesign to eliminate roadway deaths. It will also require changes in human behavior (like choosing smaller, safer modes), changes in vehicle design (to protect those outside the vehicle as much as those inside), and changes in travel speeds (slower is almost always safer!).

The safe systems approach breaks down silos and builds up non-traditional partnerships. It works across city departments and public, private and community sectors. In addition to identifying safety hotspots and designing physical interventions, truly safe streets for all will also use technology to give people convenient information and services to choose safer modes, manage speeds, improve vehicle and traffic safety, and catalyze collective action.

We are thrilled at this initial down payment and looking forward to working with bold and innovative places to go above and beyond.

Longpath

By Max Lelu

In keeping with Cityfi's cross-disciplinary approach, the team has kicked off 2023 by reading Ari Wallach's book, Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors our Future Needs. In a time where everyone is bombarded by deadlines, notifications and the constant pressure to engage in short-term thinking, reading Wallach's book provided an opportunity to reflect on how we could apply a long-term lens to our lives and work. In Longpath, Wallach lays out his philosophical imperative for engaging in long-term thinking (e.g. how can we combat climate change if we are not considering the needs of the future generations we will never meet) and provides some practical frameworks for both individuals and organizations to do so (e.g. engaging in "transgenerational empathy" or revaluing incrementalism).

We ultimately all exist in a temporal context. Our ancestors created the world we live in, and our actions today will have impacts on future generations. The opportunity to create a positive legacy is ours to seize. A critical first step, however, is to reframe our own understanding of the impacts our actions today have on the unseeable future. Reading Longpath was a refreshing exercise for the team. We intend to revisit these reflections moving forward and encourage you and your organizations to do so as well.

What We’re Reading

Adaptation and Resiliency

Sustainable Mobility Strategies

Technology & Innovation

Policy