Due diligence: Running the numbers, running them again, and predicting the future outlook against all known variables. Then, be skeptical still.
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We have a political situation in the United States where Democrats are too eager to build anything if it creates a job and the Republicans are too willing to call a project a boondoggle without first investigating its merit.
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Here is the news!
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Paris and Florence don’t have entertainment districts. Neither does San Francisco. What these cities have are spaces for people. Let's focus on building more of that.
Read MoreWe shouldn’t build infrastructure for the sake of creating jobs. Jobs and economic growth are a result of having a productive system in place, not the other way around. We need to create real net wealth that benefits not only the local communities, but the region as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, jobs are great. But, building infrastructure with the primary purpose of creating jobs, with little consideration to context, is setting a bad precedence and setting up communities for unexpected liabilities.
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What makes a street safe?
I think there are a lot of elements. The design is the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s followed by speed and traffic volume. I was curious to know how the stroad held up against other alternatives. To do this, I turned to my usual test lab: my hometown of Mankato. I examined Minnesota Department of Transportation crash data & AADT (average daily traffic volume) data in an admittedly non-scientific study.
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Join Strong Towns on August 30th at Gluek's in Minneapolis. The event starts at 6pm. Cash bar. Free food. Chuck will be speaking about his new book, Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, and the upcoming Misunderstanding Mobility report. Yes, complimentary food will be joined by an open bar. You can RSVP on Facebook (or, if you'd like to do it the old fashion way - just show up).
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The next big idea is small ...
This isn’t a call to end long-range comprehensive plans. In lots of circumstances, they are necessary. This is a call to consider that many small players can be much more effective, and more risk-adverse than one large project. Large plans like Elk Run expose us to tremendous risk if they fail. The future of our plans need to be everything that Elk Run isn’t: small, numerous, and nimble.
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The desire for convention centers is simple: it brings in visitors with outside money who consume things that are taxed at higher rates (alcohol, hotel rooms, rental cars, etc). From the city’s perspective, it appears to be a win-win. But, these investments come at a cost. In this case, the cost is increased competition.
The number of conventions and total number of people going to conventions has decreased since it peaked in the mid-1990s. The situation we have now is that of more cities are competing for fewer dollars.
It's a classic race to the bottom.
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It seems like you can’t get anything developed downtown without some sort of tax deal. Whether you politically agree with these tax subsidies doesn’t matter, what matters is we acknowledge that we can’t keep this as the status quo for much longer.
The new economy, which I argue that were transitioning into, will require multiple players who can produce small-scale, incremental development. This is how urbanism will be accomplished in the next 20 years, but it will probably need to occur outside of contemporary channels. This means creatively circumventing tradition lending methods, bypassing euclidean zoning and approval processes with out-dated bureaucratic methods and by avoiding the single developer mentality.
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Kansas City's Power & Light District is an infill project in an urban area that connects with the street grid and brings people downtown. It sounds like a success story, but in reality, it’s a financial drain.
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