Guest blog by Joshua Amaral, LEG’23
I was fortunate to be in a very diverse group, in terms of geographic location, industry, and experience. But given this, I was especially struck by the similarities, or common threads, that ran between all of our economic growth challenges. My challenge is a fairly small one in the grand scheme of things – spurring housing development in one midsize American city – and at first glance, you would assume has little to do with economic empowerment of women in Saudi Arabia, or economic development in reserve lands of Vancouver. And yet, much of the types of interventions are identical. Making connections, increasing the surface area of your approaches, and building skills are all the same. It was clear that these issues all have a Dunning-Kruger effect to them – they appear really simple to solve, and then endlessly complex and intractable, and then end up distilled down to a relatively simple intervention.
As I’m sure are all challenges covered in the course, my challenge is a tricky one: construction of housing costs more than the housing is worth, or the rents that will be generated by it, so encouraging more housing development is fraught. One idea that was hazy to me entering the course was that some builders can complete projects more economically than others, and they tend to be smaller, less sophisticated, and based locally. Thus, a big insight I was able to flesh out through the course and with the help of my group mates was the idea that we should be incubating and growing these small local developers rather than working to recruit distant more sophisticated developers.
The biggest insight, and a clear idea we will put into practice, is creating a program for emerging developers. We intend to pair these smaller developers just starting out, with contractors and real estate professionals that may assist them (or become developers themselves), along with nonprofits looking to assist with housing development, and then we will bring in panels of speakers focused on the many topics that give developers friction: architectural services, permitting, construction management, financing, and more.
I found the course to be very comprehensive. Given my focus is on a niche municipal or regional issue, I would appreciate some focus on those sorts of scale issues, but I understand why that may not be practical, and I was easily able to make the course useful given my context.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Leading Economic Growth Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 58 Participants successfully completed this 10-week online course in December 2023. These are their learning journey stories.