Preface

The Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs is devoted to bringing cutting-edge research to bear on urban policy issues in an accessible manner. The collaboration between the Wharton School and the Brookings Institution in this endeavor represents an effort to draw on resources and personnel in both academia and the policy community. We hope and expect that the journal itself will be of interest and use to an even wider audience, including policymakers and their staffs, private sector agents, journalists, students, and others.

Each volume of the journal will publish papers that are first presented at a conference and then revised extensively in response to reactions at the conference. The papers and formal discussant remarks presented in this inaugural issue are based on a conference held at Brookings on October 7 and 8, 1999.

The journal could not have been established without the efforts of many key people at each institution. At Brookings, President Michael Armacost has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project from the very beginning. Robert Litan, director of the Economic Studies Program, has encouraged the project at every turn. Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, has been a tireless and vocal supporter of the journal and its goals and has helped provide significant financial support.

At Wharton, Peter Linneman and Joseph Gyourko, former director and current director of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center, have supported this undertaking intellectually and financially from its inception. The dean's office has made its contribution by freeing some of Janet Rothenberg Pack's time to organize the annual conference and edit the volume.The Department of Public Policy and Management has in numerous ways encouraged Professor Pack's participation in this endeavor.

We are extremely grateful to Alice Rivlin, currently a senior fellow at Brookings and chair of the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority, for delivering a stimulating after-dinner presentation. Her speech focused on the simple but beguiling question of what the District of Columbia could do to attract 100,000 new residents over the next ten years and stimulated a lively debate among conference participants.

Caleb Patten and Julia Niemiec at Brookings expertly arranged conference logistics. Amy Liu and Jamaine Tinker in the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy have provided outstanding assistance and guidance in establishing the journal and the conference.

We would like to thank the authors and discussants for taking special efforts to write their papers in a clear and accessible manner. The resulting papers make clear that one does not need to sacrifice analytical rigor in order to communicate research results in plain English.

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