January 13, 2017

A new slant

Brookings has launched a multidisciplinary research effort to examine mobility, or how people move in their environments.  The Moving to Access initiative (M2A) involves combining transportation , urban planning, and financial analysis to assess policy opportunities for improved mobility.

The synthesis: Long-standing structures, goals, and metrics for how people move in their communities are losing meaning (e.g., number of people within 30 minutes of a hospital) because commuting styles and patterns have changed.  Additionally, travel time is of increasing importance to people and is a major household cost, both in money and time.

The takeaway: Governments and policymakers need to develop better metrics for valuing and measuring residents’ access to work and other community resources. This includes rethinking 50-year-old infrastructure systems that no longer encourage or incentivize mobility.

In the weeds

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal on Social Sciences has published a well-synthesized piece analyzing the impacts of the Dodd-Frank Act.  “The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Financial Stability and Economic Growth” helpfully breaks provisions of the act into five buckets: Clear Wins, Clear Losses, Costly Trade-offs, Unfinished Business and Not Soon To Tell.  As Congress considers financial regulatory reform, this piece is well-framed for the novice and the expert alike.

Need to know

The N.C. General Assembly will reconvene on Wednesday, January 25 at noon.

An event, “Restoring Democracy in NC: The Case for Nonpartisan Redistricting,” will be held on Thursday, January 26 at 6pm in Greensboro.


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