Category: Economics & Statistics
-
Detroit Goes Bankrupt?
Detroit filed for bankruptcy. City planners received this news with shock and dismay, like the death of an ailing uncle, the conversations around the water coolers made it sound like the City was living on borrowed time. But the big question is why? Why Detroit, which in the 1950’s was the nation’s fourth largest city, with a population of 1.8 million, was allowed…
-
Rethinking Real Estate Investment
I was fully intending to write something appropriate for the post-Thanksgiving consumption frenzy, it being Cyber Monday after all. Perhaps a piece on how mall design came out of traditional downtowns, which are now seeing a resurgence, but are looking more and more like malls… But I just cannot for the life of me…
-
BAT Opens Her Wings
Rising like a concrete castle at the southern end of Sunset Park, the Brooklyn Army Terminal gives new meaning to the term “military-industrial complex”. A 97-acre living monument to Brooklyn’s military past, it has recently gotten some good press as a symbol of what manufacturing can look like in New York today. Last weekend it was…
-
Trickle Down Government and the Role of City Planning
In the October 3rd US Presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney criticized the current state of the federal government by using the term “trickle down government”. The turn of phrase is a striking one because means two things; first that the political right in this nation is willing to abandon…
-
Good news on poverty!
-
Beyond Zuccotti Park
New York City has these strange beasts called Privately Owned Public Spaces (or POPS) which were put to some significant tests for the first time in recent history during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Many planners were watching the protests to see if privately owned spaces, like Zuccotti Park, could truly operate as public…