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By Lynn A. Knight and Calandra Cruickshank (reprinted from LinkedIn) From coast to coast, north to south, from rural to suburban communities outside major metros, the same question is emerging: how can communities remain economically competitive if workers can no longer afford to live there? A recent news article used a new word to describe San Francisco's housing market: "hysteria." Fueled by both a longstanding housing shortage and a surge in AI-related jobs, competition

CROs have been long associated with disaster management, but their contributions to normal state and local operating conditions has been undervalued. Only 13 states and fewer than 150 cities and counties in the entire country have a Chief Resilience Officer, or an equivalent position, today. This is going to change as states and localities begin to understand how important the function will be for accessing international capital markets, driving down insurance costs, promotin

The 2018 Kilauea volcano eruption blocked important roads, erased some of the area's most treasured natural features, destroyed homes and caused small businesses to close doors, while longer-term recovery funds took over two years to flow to the community. That's a very long time to wait for recovery, particularly for lower income residents. When an extreme event like a tornado or hurricane strikes, it's an individual tragedy. The gap that too often follows between the emer

A recent RAND report accurately diagnoses a critical failure point in modern technology policy: "big-G government" moves on a linear timeline, while frontier AI moves exponentially. Waiting for centralized, federal legislation to prevent AI insecurity is a strategy designed to fail. The report rightly argues that business and civil society must step up to manage operational risks, design market incentives, and cushion the community-level shocks of workforce disruption. But wh

A new ISD framework argues that disaster management and community development belong inside the same system — and that treating them as separate is costing communities their futures. There is a question that almost no American community can answer: Is our community better off than it was five years ago? Not richer or poorer in the narrow fiscal sense. Not whether this year's budget came in on target or whether the new development project broke ground on schedule. But better o