Working from the top down, with efficiency as our greatest value, we can bring about great change in a short time with limited resources. What we give up with that approach is resiliency.
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We're all Detroit. The sooner we realize it, the sooner we can commit ourselves to building a nation of strong towns.
Read MoreNobody should understand that more clearly than our nation's DOTs. They are simultaneously over committed and under funded. While they obsess about the latter, it is the former that they will ultimately be forced to reconcile. Many in these agencies -- especially the second tier of leaders that are a little more removed from our highway building heydays and a little further from retirement than the first tier -- understand this clearly, but they lack an acceptable alternative approach. They are trapped by the inertia of their organization.
It is to those people that I offer my thoughts on the principles and understandings that a Next Generation DOT should embody when making that inevitable course correction.
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1. Big banks and large investors have the capacity to leverage modest amounts of equity into large market positions by taking on debt.
2. One form of the carry trade takes advantage of the interest rate difference between short term and long term securities.
3. Interest rates kept artificially low and stable reduce the risk associated with that form of a domestic carry trade.
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Our local governments are chasing that next Alex Rodriguez, that big, splashy project that will excite the electorate and make it seem like we're making progress. Too many are pretending they're the Yankees, trying to cover up their shortcomings by spending more and more money instead of doing the little things that build up to success. For every Alex Rodriguez that signs the big contract and then leads their team to victory, there are dozens of teams where the Alex Rodriguez player blows up and the team's competitiveness is sucked away while they pay off a bloated contract. Our cities can't be run like the Yankees if they want to have any chance at long term success. We need a strong towns approach.
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Last week I received a notice from the American Planning Association that I needed to complete my Certification Maintenance (CM) by the end of the year in order to maintain my American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) certification. I checked and while I have 20 more credits than are necessary, I am lacking the three required ethics and law credits. I thought about it for a minute and then realized something:
I don't care enough to go get them.
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Over the years I've found something I think people who love walkable, human-oriented places collectively struggle with: we want to get the *very best* urban design codified and implemented in our cities. This is of course the right end-goal, but it hurts us by limiting our ability to productively deal with overwhelming quantity of low-quality, underperforming space in the city.
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Safe Routes to School is a very popular federal program designed to make is easier for students to walk and bike to school. The amount spent on it, however, is a tiny fraction of what we spend each year building brand new schools.
In the little town of New Albany, Mississippi, people decide to follow logic instead of accepted parking norms.
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Mississippi traveler and author Dean Klinkenberg is the guest on this week's podcast. Dean has spent many years traveling the Mississippi river and he provides his insights, assessments and thoughts for the future of this important waterway. You can follow Dean's work on his blog at mississippivalleytraveler.com.
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