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Economic Growth through the Adjacent Possible

BY BETSY GARDNER • November 17, 2021

This episode is a conversation between Professor Steve Goldsmith and Ricardo Hausmann, the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy and director of the Growth Lab, one of the most well-regarded and influential hubs for research on international development. Professor Hausmann discusses the Lab's new Metroverse tool, a powerful yet easy-to-use data visualization of urban economies across the globe. Built for policy makers, economist, communities, and businesses, the Metroverse places a city’s current technological and economic capabilities in context, showing how and where any specific urban economy can move into it's "adjacent possible" growth areas. Metroverse maps and visualizes "what a city is good at today to help understand what it can become tomorrow."

Listen below, or wherever you get your podcasts, to hear Professors Goldsmith and Hausman discuss data-driven policy making, diversification in metropolitan areas, and how mayors can leave their city better than they inherited it. Transcript available here.

About the Author

Betsy Gardner

Betsy Gardner is a writer for Data-Smart City Solutions and the producer of the Data-Smart City Pod. Prior to joining the Ash Center, Betsy worked in a variety of roles in higher education, focusing on deconstructing racial and gender inequality through research, writing, and facilitation. She also researched government spending and transparency at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Betsy holds a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Policy from Northeastern University, a bachelor’s degree in Art History from Boston University, and a graduate certificate in Digital Storytelling from the Harvard Extension School.

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