Category: Community|Economics

  • Feeding the Sun Corridor: Exploring Arizona’s Zero Sum Game

    Feeding the Sun Corridor: Exploring Arizona’s Zero Sum Game

    Perceptions of Sustainability Sustainability is the paradigm of our age.i Architects, urban planners, real estate developers, technology companies, college campuses, food distributors, nearly everyone is doing it. Regrettably, conversation surrounding sustainability is commonly directed at one, shallow resolve: proclaiming whether something is or is not sustainable.  Use these biodegradable sponges, they’re sustainable! Don’t buy a…

  • Reforming the MTA

    Reforming the MTA

    Please feel free to view my Capstone: Bridging the Transportation Finance Gap: Planning Beyond Boundaries for a Connected 21st Century Please also feel free to view my Senior Honors Thesis: (Re)New Your City, New York City: Transporting Transformation Hubs New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is constantly running trains, but it is also constantly running…

  • TOD: Transit-Owned Development

    TOD: Transit-Owned Development

    Summary: New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is constantly running trains, but it is also constantly running a deficit. Unlike profitable transportation companies, such as the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway (MTR), the MTA has few valuable real estate assets which could be adequately transformed into transit-oriented and transit-owned joint development hubs. Similar to other…

  • (RE)New York City

    (RE)New York City

    Riel, 2014 . (Re)New Your City, New York City: Transporting Transformation Hubs America’s public transportation agencies cannot be profitable in the 21st century due to a political economy that isolates these agencies from municipal zoning and land use policies, and from forming value capture mechanisms – from tax increment financing to joint development and the…

  • Extensions & Expansions

    Extensions & Expansions

    As local lore has it, when a relative asked Charles Tufts what he would do with his land, and more specifically with “that bleak hill over in Medford,” Tufts replied, “I will put a light on it.” The Universalist Church founded Tufts University in the 1840s with a gift of 20 acres of land from Boston…

  • Progressive Public-Private Partnership Profits

    Progressive Public-Private Partnership Profits

    New York City does not lack visionaries or visionary plans with hindsight, foresight, and insight, but these visionaries lack power. Instead, “borderline criminals” continue to dim our future. America has spent trillions rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, but when it comes to maintaining the infrastructure of a region with a $1.4 trillion GDP, money can’t seem to be…