The good news is that, as of today, I'm now the chief urban planner of the Metropolitan Abundance Project. Over the past six years, interest in state-level pro-housing reform has exploded. Alongside my work in California, I've spent a growing share of my time— especially nights and weekends—helping YIMBYs in over two-dozen other states, and at least six other countries, to scale pro-housing best practices. In this new role, I'm excited to be making this "Johnny Appleseed" work my focus. There's still a lot of work to be done adopting common sense policies—like legalizing ADUs or ending parking mandates—in most states. But in a few cases, other states have already lapped California, by a lot! I'm looking forward to working with local partners and networks like WNN. (I've always joked that I'm a Trotskyite YIMBY: to secure the revolution at home, we must export it!) In addition to this policy transfer work, the main goal of MAP is to take a step back and chart out the bigger picture reforms needed to make metropolises work. It's clear that urban governance—certainly in the US–faces a number of issues that trend toward stagnation. How do we scale transit and infrastructure? How do we shift local financial incentives toward growth? How can we better govern fragmented metropolitan areas? How do we deliver public services effectively? A lot of smart people are already working on aspects of these issues. Our hope is to coordinate these ideas, develop the next big ideas, and bundle all of it into a format that might actually translate into real policy reform—not just within the US, but across the world. (If you've followed me for any amount of time, you know that I think that we're not doing nearly enough international comparative work in this policy space!) I'm extremely excited to be working with Abigail Doerr, our managing director on this project. She brings an impressive background in transit advocacy, rounding out our expertise. Indeed, the most explosive early interest in our work has not been about housing, but transit! It's trite but true: this isn't the usual think tank. Our core team comes out of real-world advocacy, with major wins and losses to draw upon. We're thinking about the big picture, structural determinants of policy success and failure. We're mapping out implementation. And above all, we're obsessed with measurable outcomes. (To my mind, the goal is to build out a Bertaudista—Shoupista policy shop, and if you know what that means, bless your heart.) Follow @metroabundance to stay plugged in.