Bruce J. Katz is the inaugural Centennial Scholar at the Brookings Institution, where he focuses on the challenges and opportunities of global urbanization. Katz assumed this cross-institution role in January 2016 after 20 years as the vice president and co-director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, which he founded in 1996. He is also co-author of The Metropolitan Revolution (Brookings Press, 2013), which argues that cities have become the vanguard of policy innovation and problem-solving in the United States and the world.
As Brookings’s only centennial scholar, Katz and his team collaborate with experts throughout Brookings and beyond to develop new models of finance, growth, and governance in cities and nations. He regularly advises cross-sector metropolitan, national, and global leaders on public reforms and private innovations that advance the well-being of metropolitan areas and their countries.
Katz heads the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking, a collaboration with the New York-based Project for Public Spaces focused on cross-disciplinary approaches to city building. He is also one of the leaders of the Brookings Project on 21st Century City Governance.
Before joining Brookings, Katz served as chief of staff to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and was the senior counsel and then staff director for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs. In 2008, he co-led the housing and urban issues transition team for the Obama Administration and served as a senior advisor to the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan for the first 100 days of the administration.
In 2006, he received the prestigious Heinz Award in Public Policy for his contributions to the understanding of the “function and values of cities and metropolitan areas and profoundly influencing their economic vitality, livability and sustainability.”
Katz is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School, and is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
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