Budget season is here, which means jettisoning the long-term strategies birthed in the idyllic days of budgetary prosperity. Or if not jettisoning, at least reconsidering. Expansion of public transit gives way to finding drivers, youth monitoring programs disappear and are replaced by the tried-and-true method of jailing, and plans to plant trees are replaced by [...]
From NAC:
In the world of securities, municipal bonds – like their paternal counterpart, Treasury bills – have always been the conservative, don’t-rock-the-boat, unexciting-yet-safe option. You won’t make a killing, but the market probably won’t kill you, either. In the past, they’ve been favored as a sort of bomb-shelter security when the financial skies seem to [...]
From NAC:
For all his passion in Roger and Me, I never thought Michael Moore really grasped the true problem of his hometown of Flint, Michigan. In the film, Moore portrays a greedy, bottom-line-obsessed General Motors CEO Roger Smith, who moved G.M.’s longstanding manufacturing plant from Flint to Mexico, leaving his company’s loyalty at the town [...]
By admin | March 23, 2009
From Next American City:
After 9/11, you could practically hear the wails coming from regional tourism offices across the country. Fliers’ fears of being on the next hijacked plane ground air travel to a halt, left hotels vacant, and short-circuited the tourism agenda of nearly every city in the country. You’d be hard pressed to find [...]
By admin | March 11, 2009
The second installment of my urban economics column (I’m going to stop prefacing these):
Economics has long been known as the dismal science, a field that bears only bad news. But to others it’s known as the useless science that bears no news at all. There’s a tension between economists and other academics who think economics [...]
By admin | February 23, 2009
My first installment of Metronomics, an urban economics column for Next American City:
The past few months have showered us with news about cities taking hatchets to their budgets and chopping away at services. In my own Philadelphia, the plan to shutter 11 libraries was notorious enough to be reported in the Economist magazine. Unfortunately, one [...]