(co-authored with Michael Saadine and Colin Higgins)

Abundance, the blockbuster book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, two journalists we have long admired, has rightfully spent weeks on bestseller lists and has accordingly dictated months of policy discourse.

The book delivers on many levels and deserves the accolades it has received. The central thesis of the book — that it is time for the nation to build again and embrace abundance over scarcity — is timely and compelling. It has the potential not only to galvanize positive change across multiple areas of domestic life but also to alter our politics by showing that modern societies can function and provide affordable goods and services for broad segments of our population.

The book’s central critique — that modern day liberalism has hindered the building of things – is sharp and spot on. We have experienced firsthand the drift towards “the perfect” in policymaking over the past several decades — saddling every project with rules and restrictions that “make a point” with various constituencies but prevent “making a difference” and getting things done — what Klein has provocatively called “everything bagel liberalism.”

As Klein and Thompson state clearly in the conclusion, Abundance is a call to action, not a think tank report of policy solutions.

“What we are proposing is less a set of policy solutions than a new set of questions around which our politics should revolve. What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?”

Here is where it gets interesting. Much of Abundance was clearly written before the 2024 elections. Many of the book’s examples of pro-abundance institutions and policies are ones initiated and implemented by the federal government. The 1940s Office of Scientific Research and Development ability to move penicillin from the lab to widespread use. The invention of dual use technologies (e.g., the internet, GPS) through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The accelerated discovery and deployment of a COVID vaccine through Operation Warp Speed. The economy shaping initiatives — Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act — of the Biden Administration.

The world in which Abundance finds itself is decidedly different. The Trump Administration has proposed, and the Congress has enacted, dramatic cuts to scientific research in general and medical and clean energy innovation in particular. Key elements of the federal government have been significantly hobbled. Even bipartisan success stories like CHIPS face significant budgetary, staffing, and operational headwinds.

Core to our purposes here, this means that responsibility for solving a multitude of hard problems in the nation has, ipso facto, been delegated down to states, counties, cities and a broad array of private and civic actors. The delivery of Abundance must now occur in a federated republic, where the federal government is no longer always a reliable partner but sometimes also an impediment, and problem solving is distributed across fragmented layers of government and sectors of society. Recent months have revealed how little the country is prepared for what this means in aggregate for “business as usual” – let alone for the ambitious agenda that Klein and Thompson put forward.

Put simply: in this environment we believe it’s important to start laying out what delivering Abundance looks like from the ground up.

Below we lay out three considerations for the tens of thousands of policymakers and practitioners throughout the country who have eagerly embraced the Abundance paradigm across partisan and ideological lines. These challenges are prompted by Klein and Thompson’s book, but sensitive to the current realities of the federal government. We raise these challenges to begin sketching out our vision for what it means to deliver on the themes set out in Abundance today, rather than waiting for a concerted federal push (which may or may not ever arrive).

1. What kind of public institutions are needed to deliver Abundance?

Klein and Thompson assert in the Introduction that “[i]nstitutional renewal is a labor that every generation faces anew.” The book has a well-researched discussion of federal models and reform ideas, assessing, for example, the formation, operations and orientation of federal innovation agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The modus operandi of federal agencies still matters, of course, even in a world where he current Administration has dramatically cut back the federal civil service by over 300,000 employees (or roughly 12%). But what matters as much if not more in the coming years is the capacity and capabilities of a plethora of state, metropolitan and local agencies and entities. To take a few, of many, emblematic questions:

• To produce, preserve and acquire affordable housing, what does a 21st century public housing authority or state housing finance agency look like?

• To advance innovations in water technology, clean energy and energy efficiency, what does a 21st century water utility or energy utility look like?

• To adjust to the impact of reshoring and artificial intelligence on work, how will the next generation of community colleges and skills providers function?

In many cities, specialized public agencies are often forgotten appendages of local government, degraded in stature and diminished in capacity. Many were formed almost a century ago, meaning that they too have been saddled with an accretion of burdensome rules and barriers to effective and expeditious action.

The path back to institutional impact may lie partly in recognizing that public agencies often have more power and capital than they think. In Atlanta, for example, the public housing agency has created a new subsidiary, the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation, with the mission to dispose of publicly owned land and buildings in the service of housing production. In Los Angeles, the public housing agency is using its access to low cost, tax-exempt bonds to intervene in the market, acquire properties that the private sector can no longer support and shore up affordability for decades. In Hampton Roads, Virginia, the Hampton Roads Sanitation District has used revenue raising powers granted in the 1940s to become a globally recognized vehicle for technological innovation and entrepreneurial support.

Josh Humphries, one of the architects of Atlanta’s housing strategy often says that legacy agencies need to “figure out the powers they have and leverage them to the max.” Discovering and deploying hidden powers and capital is a critical path to progress at the city, county and state level which now takes on new urgency.

2. How will innovative approaches to Abundance get diffused and scaled across the decentralized republic?

Klein and Thompson, to their credit, place equal emphasis on invention and implementation to ensure that ideas have transformative impact. Implementation has one meaning at the federal level, given the wide reach of federal programs and policies.

In a distributed republic, however – and one where the federal government is playing a less catalytic role — implementation has different layers of complexity. How does, for example, an innovative practice or policy reform or institution created in one first mover city or metropolis ultimately travel across jurisdictional borders and become adopted or adapted by not just a few “fast followers” but by dozens if not hundreds of places?

Ironically, Klein and Thompson refer several times to the widespread adoption of restrictive zoning and land use ordinances.

“In the early 1900s, Los Angeles adopted a small package of regulations that divided the city between zones for industrial buildings and residential construction. New York City followed, and soon enough, so did almost everywhere else. … The concept of zoning, unheard of in 1900, covered 70 percent of the US population by 1933.”

Remarkably, the nation once knew how to spread the innovative practices of the day, without the modern tools of the internet, artificial intelligence and easy-to-access information. In the case of zoning, unfortunately, we are now experiencing the adverse consequences of that spread.

The keys to diffusion and scaling across a federated republic, then as now, are routinization, dissemination and differentiation.

Routines matter. They reduce risk and simplify replication, enabling faster uptake. Common zoning ordinances. Common public housing statutes. Common building codes. Common term sheets. Common capital stacks. Common analytics. Innovation-in-a-box, so to speak.

Dissemination also matters. Networks like the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties and the U.S. Conference of Mayors have long served as vehicles for codifying “best practices” and norms of government behavior. These organizations have been joined by a broad array of intermediaries and philanthropies that specialize in moving replicable public sector innovations in housing or transportation or education from place to place.

Differentiation finally matters. There are different kinds of innovations bubbling up through the country that require different kinds of diffusion and scaling strategies. A “product” innovation (e.g., a new financial instrument or capital stack) has great potential for export since it can be captured, carried and applied by the inventing financial institution or industrial corporation or professional service firm that operate in more than one jurisdiction and invented the product in the first place. There is less friction and more speed and ease associated with market players being the carriers of innovation.

“Policy” innovations (e.g., the setting of local goals or changes in local ordinances or procurement procedures) or “process” innovations (e.g., the kinds of institutional reforms mentioned above) may require a greater focus on differing local market conditions, governance structures and constituency roles. These differences require a focus on persuading different local stakeholders (an art in itself) and, ultimately, adapting rather than simply replicating innovations to satisfy local distinctions and priorities.

The upshot is this. The authors contend in one chapter of the book that “we need a better science of science” to understand how the process of discovery works. Along the same lines, a federated republic, with distributed power and decision making, needs a better practice of diffusion and scaling if transformative implementation is going to happen.

3. How does Abundance get delivered in a nation where solving problems is enabled not just by different levels of government but by different sectors of society?

The federal/state construct envisioned by 18th century federalism does not reflect the way things get done in 21st century America. This necessitates a multi-part view of how to reach the goals that Abundance sets out.

Importantly, Klein and Thompson clearly respect the market making power of cities. They’ve done their homework, embracing pathbreaking work by Ed Glaeser, Enrico Moretti and others. The message is clear: for bounded geographies that are rich with history and research and culture and amenities, magic happens. Ideas are generated. Innovation flourishes. Companies form. Enterprises grow. Quality jobs increase. Workers gain new skills. Paths out of poverty multiply. In this way, cities and metropolitan areas more broadly are the economic gift that keeps on giving.

Cities, in short, provide the platform for economic growth, the potential for social mobility and the foundation for continuous invention and iterative experimentation.

But this is not just about market agglomeration. As Bruce and Jeremy Nowak laid out in The New Localism, the other superpower of cities is their unusual propensity to solve problems because they function as networks. Today, problem solving is co-created, powered horizontally by multi-sector networks of individuals and entities with knowledge and capacity that cut across disciplines. Cities are powerful because the function as integrated ecosystems rather than separate legislative committees and executive bureaucracies. Problems are solved holistically through networks rather than exclusively through governments.

In the words of Matthew Taylor, the former head of the Royal Society of the Arts in the UK, cities have the unique capacity to “think like systems and act like entrepreneurs.” Regardless of size, no single organization can bring about economic and energy transformations on its own. Radical collaboration is the order of the day.

Cities use networked approaches to solve problems that cut across sectors, disciplines, and institutions. This enables them to recognize and respond to complex challenges with flexibility and creativity. It also shields them from the partisan rancor and ideological polarization that too often paralyze higher levels of governments.

The new federal reality, of course, requires not only forward-thinking approaches around needed public institutions, diffusion and scaling, and cross-sector work to address the gaps created by federal retrenchment. We also must recognize that many of the foundations of local resilience and innovation rely on federal funding. State and local governments are now reckoning with potential shortfalls. University research and innovation are being depleted. The federalist response will not just be about ingenuity; it will be about resources.

Delivering Abundance will thus not just be the work of charismatic elected officials or savvy technocrats (though both are important elements). Depending on the problem being solved, it will require radical collaboration between state and local governments, private corporations, and non-profit universities, philanthropies and intermediaries. Cracking the housing challenge, for example, will require new coalitions of government agencies, financial institutions, investors, builders and landlords; advancing educational achievement will, by contrast, necessitate close collaboration between corporations, elementary and secondary schools, and community colleges and training providers. The special role of new entrepreneurs and innovators will be present throughout.

Radical collaboration, of course, is not new; it has been an essential, distinctive part of the American experiment since the founding of the Republic. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, this “spirit of association” is deeply embedded in our cultural psyche and sets our nation apart. And the common characteristics of the people driving this change — pragmatism, commitment to place, impatience and a penchant for tangible transactions and visible results — are also deeply rooted in the American DNA.

Where does this leave us: Building a Ground-up Abundance Agenda

Let us return to where we began. The publication and growing popularity of Abundance is a signature event. It provides a clear and compelling vision of a different society and different politics. But delivering Abundance circa 2025 requires additional, deeper levels of thinking and action about how change happens in our messy federated republic.

We have set out three key practical considerations for delivering on the goals set out by Klein and Thompson in a country with a diminished federal government – and one we would argue, where problem power has always been decentralized. The challenge here, of course, is achieving the scale of impact envisioned by Abundance. The seeds of an answer we feel are present around us, but require more nurturing, more dedicated focus, and more cross-sector and cross-jurisdictional collaboration. This won’t always be simple. But, if we can pull it off, it will help the innovative actions, and the spreading of those innovations, tap into the vast reservoir of energy, expertise and enthusiasm that still exists in the country.

Localizing Abundance is the path forward.

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University. Michael Saadine is Managing Partner at Invisible Group, an interdisciplinary built environment investment platform. Colin Higgins is Executive Director of the National Housing Crisis Task Force.