ESI Blog: Present Value
Present Value was created as a platform for sharing ideas, discussing our interests and improving connections with our community. Each week, we invite guest contributors from the ranks of our senior advisors, industry experts, and thought leaders.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, several workers have left their offices and residents have fled from city center homes, leaving behind the hustle and bustle of large employment hubs and mega-cities. The rise of remote working and the digital economy has lime lighted questions regarding the death and life of small and enormous […]
For this month’s Philadelphia Housing Index (PHI) blog post, we took a look at new construction permit data from Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspection to see how Philadelphia’s development pipeline performed during the COVID-19 pandemic and which neighborhoods showed the most construction permitting activity in the past year. We filtered the data to examine […]
Think tanks, independent from government, provide expert advice on a diverse range of policy issues and products topics such as social policy, economics, and technology through interdisciplinary research. In the policy-making process, think tanks can play critical roles in stages such as setting the policy agenda, designing policy interventions, policy advocacy, monitoring the policy implementation, […]
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted to cities around the world the importance of smart city programs—the use of technology, data, and innovative solutions to address their social, environmental, and economic challenges. Indeed, 65% of city leaders surveyed in 2020 as part of ESI ThoughtLab’s Smart City Solutions for a Risker World reported that the top lessons […]
Over the past year, the construction industry has been buffeted by many factors due to the fallout from the spread of the coronavirus. One area that has proved particularly troublesome is the rapid increase in prices for construction materials. One specific item—lumber—is notable for its sharp increase in price that has remained high for a […]
On March 18th and 19th 2021, the first high-level diplomatic meeting since Biden’s election took place in Anchorage, Alaska against the backdrop of deteriorating bilateral relations of the two countries. The meeting opened with heated exchanges of rebukes of each other’s policies, but followed with much more rational and constructive discussions, which suggests that both […]
Millions of Americans across the country began to receive $1,400 stimulus payments included in the American Rescue Plan as early as March 17th. An estimated 1.1 million Philadelphians are expected to receive these payments. While not replacing lost earned income—the purpose of expanded unemployment and business safety-net programs like PPP—this payment program represents a very […]
COVID-19 has served as a stress test for cities as businesses and services were shut down and medical facilities stretched to their limits. It has exposed weaknesses in digital infrastructure and resilience as disruptions have emerged unexpectedly with far-reaching aftershocks. Simultaneously, cities are facing mounting pressures to address vulnerabilities related to cybersecurity and climate change. […]
When we talk about wanting to make a difference through our Equity & Inclusion practice, it is simultaneously a bland statement and an eyebrow-raising one. Bland because who doesn’t want to have a positive impact? But eyebrow-raising because it makes it sound like we are a non-profit or a think tank, rather than a for-profit […]
Last week saw the passages of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which is topped only by the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in the size and scope of the infusion of spending into the economy. The plan includes direct payments to households and an extension of unemployment insurance benefits that, like the CARES Act, should […]