How do we minimize the chance that our best intentions will go awry and leave everybody worse off? Let’s set these 3 ground rules.
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It’s possible to grow and accumulate wealth…but not without intention. That starts with asking the right question. "How do we get more money for infrastructure?" is the wrong question.
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The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.
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The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.
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Here's how one strong citizen approaches the home buying process.
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Local governments have a moral duty to pursue growth and investment strategies that have no chance of blowing up.
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How does a city balance the expectations of drivers with the needs of productive places and the people who use them, when fast-paced technological change may soon upend the basic realities on which such assessments are built?
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We never calculate—let alone track—the public's actual return-on-investment (dollars in versus dollars out over multiple life cycles) when we do a project. We never even ask the question.
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Yes, many thriving places have attractive lawn furniture, tasteful signage, and abundant flowers. But adding those items to a place with fundamental flaws is just lipstick on a pig.
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Reintroducing some risk, or rather, making the risk that is already there more evident, may be the best thing we can do to help re-build a culture where small mistakes don’t have devastating consequences.
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Not only do small downtown shops provide a higher rate of tax revenue than big box stores; they're also a much lower risk investment for the community.
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Maybe we're doing it wrong.
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A diversity of transportation options has recognized and measurable value. If one link fails (a bridge collapse, a sinkhole, a major crash, etc.) and is closed, others can pick up the burden.
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A twisted look at the twisted federal transportation bill.
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How many fender benders equals one life?
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Texting while driving is a very real problem. The cause of the problem, however, isn’t recklessness but an incorrect perception of safety on behalf of drivers who feel little risk in texting. We can write all the anti-distracted driving laws we want but, at best, we will only displace the problem, replacing texting with some other distraction. To really address this problem, we need to be willing to incorporate driver psychology, including risk response, into our engineering approach.
Read MoreThe real estate entitlement process is like walking a tightrope. How can we get more developers safely across?
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What's the first task in a risk-oriented economic development strategy?
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