Biting the Hands That Feed Us Baylen J. Linnken Mariza Ruelas currently faces up to two years in jail in California for the crime of selling ceviche through a Facebook food group. Welcome to the mad world of American food regulation. In Biting the Hands That Feed Us, Baylen Linnekin looks closely at a system that can take pride in a historically safe food supply but that also imposes too many rules that defy common sense. Linnekin traces the system’s origins to The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s exposé of the appalling conditions in Chicago’s … [Read more...]
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s City of Spectacle
Building the City of Spectacle: Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Remaking of Chicago by Costas Spirou and Dennis R. Judd Richard M. Daley took office as mayor of Chicago in 1989. The city was at a low ebb following the bitter racial conflicts of the so-called Council Wars period, when a largely white city council fought to stymie Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor. During Daley’s 22 years in office, many of the Windy City’s neighborhoods gentrified, in part because of a blizzard of municipal-improvement projects originating with … [Read more...]
Detroit’s New Streetlights Show Service Rebuilding in Action
I've been arguing that one thing struggling post-industrial cities need to do is take care of their own business, doing things like addressing legacy liabilities and rebuilding of core public services. Last week I write about Buffalo doing just this by completely re-writing its zoning code and creating a new land use map of the city to bring its planning ordinances up to date for the 21st century. Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic at the New York Times, recently wrote a feature on another good example: the replacement of Detroit's … [Read more...]
San Francisco Observations
I made quite a few trips to San Francisco during the late 90s into the early 2000s, but hadn't been back in a very long time - probably close to 15 years. Last week I was there for a conference and a long weekend and got to spend some time exploring the city. I won't claim a comprehensive review, but I did have a few takeaways to share. 1. Fewer homeless than expected. Based on the rhetoric you read in the papers, I expected SF to be overrun with aggressive homeless people. This wasn't the case. There were visible homeless to be sure, but … [Read more...]
How Newcastle Went From Post-Industrial Wasteland to Top 10 Global Travel Destination
Creating Cities by Marcus Westbury I'll make it easy for you: buy this book. Creating Cities is an engaging, well-written overview of the Renew Newcastle effort in Australia that helped turn the moribund downtown of a fading steel city into one of Lonely Planet's top ten global travel destinations in 2011. But not only a breezy read and a feel good case study, this book is also a celebration of bottom-up urbanism, and citizens taking the revitalization of their city into their own hands. In contrast to the typical top down planning, … [Read more...]
A $63 Million High School Football Stadium Shows Changing Republican Values
A lot of so-called "movement" conservatives dislike Donald Trump because he isn't conservative in their view. Some of them have sadly concluded that much of their own base is not as well, being much more open to things like protectionist trade policy than in years gone by. Their focus has been on working class voter, but another chunk of the Republican electorate, namely upscale metropolitan Republicans, is also moving away from some traditional conservative positions. These middle to upper middle class Republicans have little interest … [Read more...]
How Long Before Regionalization Is Rebranded as a Suburban Bailout?
Back in January Strong Towns ran a great piece by Nathaniel Hood called "This isn't an annexation - it's a bailout." It's a short story about a town in Minnesota that's about to annex a small 1960's subdivision that somehow remained in incorporated territory for many years. Basically this subdivision enjoyed low county tax rates for years and now that its infrastructure is shot, it's finally interested in joining up with the adjacent city in order to enjoy some services. Hood correctly characterizes this as a bailout, and I agree … [Read more...]
Mayor Byron Brown on Buffalo’s “Green Code”, Architecture, Economy, and More
I was privileged to get to record a podcast with Mayor Byron Brown while researching my article on Buffalo for City Journal this spring. Coming after a very tough 2007 Ed Glaeser article in City Journal on the city, it was very gracious of the mayor to agree to talk with me. I want to personally thank and honor him for that. If you do nothing else, listen to the section of the interview about the Buffalo Green Code. This is one of the most important developments ongoing in major American cities right now. Buffalo is completely re-writing … [Read more...]
What Will It Take to Bring Back Struggling Rust Belt Cities?
America is replete with struggling post-industrial cities. Massive efforts have been made, and huge amounts of money spent, to try to bring them back. Yet these have basically all failed. What will it take to bring these cities back? Let's look at the case studies of cities that actually have come back, including many of the largest ones like New York, London, and Boston. In the 1970s, the future looked very bleak for them. New York nearly went bankrupt. Today their problem is that they are so in demand that housing prices have … [Read more...]
Mayor Mick Cornett Explains Oklahoma City’s Transformation
In addition to my article about Oklahoma City's transformation, I also sat down with Mayor Mick Cornett to have him describe it in his own words. If the audio embed doesn't display for you, click over to listen on Soundcloud. We covered a number of topics during the talk, including. 0:00 - Introduction and the effect of the federal building bombing 4:20 - The Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) program 5:33 - Is Oklahoma City's economy just oil and gas? 7:32 - Securing water supplies for a city in an arid region 8:51 - OKC has had … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- …
- 6
- Next Page »