Joseph W. Kane

Joseph W. Kane is a Fellow at Brookings Metro.

Kane’s work focuses on a wide array of built environment issues, including transportation and water infrastructure. Within these areas of research, Kane has explored infrastructure’s central economic role across different regions as well as its relationship to opportunity and resilience.

Across several projects, Kane has coordinated the production of new metrics and developed other interactive content to better inform decisions by policymakers and practitioners across the country. Kane’s recent work has explored transportation and placemaking, climate investment, and federal infrastructure policy. Kane also continues to examine challenges and opportunities facing the country’s infrastructure workforce and its essential workforce more broadly—including water workers and energy workers. Kane has also testified to Congress on these issues, including a hearing titled Skill, Upskill, and Reskill: Analyzing New Investments in Workforce Development.

Prior to Brookings, Kane was an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kane holds a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree in economics and history from the College of William and Mary.