Marisa Lago, Chair of the New York City Planning Commission, will reflect on the challenges of delivering change under Mayor Bill de Blaiso’s administration.

New York and London have many similarities: global presence, population size, demographic and economic profile, but also severe housing shortage and growing inequality. But they have radically different systems of government. NYC’s Planning Department has the tricky task of balancing housing provision and job creation, through – amongst other tools – the complex process of ‘zoning’. It also has to manage the classic top-down bottom-up dynamics that shape and re-shape the urban and social landscapes of these global cities.

Marisa Lago is the Director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission. Prior to City Planning, she served in the Obama Administration as the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for International Markets and Development. Before serving at Treasury, she was the President and Chief Executive Officer of New York Empire State Development Corporation, Global Head of Compliance for Citigroup’s corporate and investment bank, Director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and General Counsel of the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Tony Travers is Director of the IPA and also of LSE London.  He is a professor in the Department of Government. His key research interests include local and regional government and public service reform. He has been an advisor to the Communities & Local Government Select Committee and also to other Parliamentary committees. He has published a number of books on cities and government, including Failure in British Government, The Politics of the Poll Tax (with David Butler and Andrew Adonis); Paying for Health, Education and Housing: How does the Centre Pull the Purse Strings (with Howard Glennerster and John Hills); The Politics of London: Governing the Ungovernable City and, most recently, London’s Boroughs at 50. He has chaired a number of official commissions, including the Independent Commission on Local Government Finance in Wales and the London Finance Commission.

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs.