I was privileged to give the opening keynote at Governing Magazine's Summit on Performance and Innovation in Louisville last week. Not only was it great to get to speak there in its own right, it's particularly special for me because Louisville is my hometown. My talk was on innovation, the imperative for innovation today, the barriers to innovation, and how to create fertile soil for innovation to flourish. The video is embedded below, but if it doesn't display for you, click over to watch on You Tube. … [Read more...]
Global City Framework
This is a concept in development, so I'm going to open this post up to comments. Global cities are like that famous quip on obscenity: we know one when we see it. But the definitions of global cities are incredibly varied and there doesn't seem to be a consensus or well-defined way to think about. I looked at the criteria used in various prominent studies back in 2012 and found them highly divergent. Only the Sassen based one appeared to have a robust definition and theoretical basis, but it's a pretty narrow definition. While it's very … [Read more...]
Why the Rent Is Too High, Reason #239
It's no secret housing costs are high and going higher in major US cities like NYC, San Francisco, etc. I was just tweeting with someone this week who moved back from Park Slope, Brooklyn to Indianapolis because her rent was being raised by over 50% (possibly that's a cumulative increase over time - not sure). Most of the urbanist discussion tends to focus around zoning as the reason prices are high. That's certainly an important factor. But there are also other things driving up costs and rents. The NYT highlighted one of them last Sunday, … [Read more...]
Talking Tuition With Mitch Daniels
This summer I sat down with Purdue University President Mitch Daniels to talk about his tuition freeze initative there for my City Journal article on the subject. Here's the podcast of that conversation. If the embed doesn't display for you, click over to listen on Soundcloud. Here are some excerpted highlights. Daniels on what's driving costs up: Government has imposed a whole lot of this administrative cost on the colleges. Not all of it, but a lot of it. You know, administrative costs have soared in banks, too. And so there’s some … [Read more...]
Building the Responsive City
The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data Smart Governance by Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford Technology, and especially the use of data and analytics, has been transforming the way cities manage service delivery. Former Indianapolis mayor New York City deputy mayor Steve Goldsmith, and his colleague at Harvard Susan Crawford, recently wrote a book called "The Responsive City" looking at this technology revolution. I recently read the book and posted some thoughts in a review posted at City Journal. Here's an excerpt: The … [Read more...]
The Urbanophile Interview: Portland Mayor Charlie Hales
I was out in Portland, Oregon last week and while there I sat down for an interview with Mayor Charlie Hales. We talked about the real Portland vs. the idea of Portland, the city's industrial base, retrofitting suburban infrastructure, and a lot more. If the audio doesn't display for you, click over to Soundcloud. Mayor Charlie Hales. Image via Wikipedia Here are some edited highlights of our conversation. For those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is available. Mayor Hales rejects the idea that we will have to … [Read more...]
Cutting To Invest In Kokomo, Indiana
A whimsical fairy tale convenience store in Kokomo, IndianaBruce Katz at the Brookings Institution likes to talk about a paradigm called "cut to invest." The idea is to cut spending on operations and lower priority items in order finance investments in higher priority infrastructure or other projects. Nice theory, but who is actually doing it? One example is Kokomo, Indiana. It's not the mythical tropical island paradise you may have heard about from the Beach Boys. Instead it's a small industrial city of around 57,000 people about 45 miles … [Read more...]
Columbus: Getting Fit For the Competition Ahead
This is the last of my entries prompted by my recent trip to Columbus. I've noted before that Columbus and Indianapolis are twin cities in many ways, though with some important differences. One of those differences is that the civic discussion in Indianapolis today is heavily driven by the urgency of reversing the decline of Marion County as the city of Indianapolis increasingly loses out demographically and economically to its suburbs. In Columbus, by contrast, I didn't sense nearly the same concern about suburban competition. While again I … [Read more...]
Are States an Anachronism?
This post originally appeared on July 11, 2011. Obviously states aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but a number of folks have suggested that state's aren't just obsolete, they are downright pernicious in their effects on local economies. One principal exponent of this point of view is Richard Longworth, who has written about it extensively in his book "Caught in the Middle" and elsewhere. Here's what he has to say on the topic: In the global era, states are simply too weak and too divided to provide for the welfare of their … [Read more...]
Why State Economic Development Strategies Should Be Metro-Centric
Globalization, technology, productivity improvements, and the resulting restructuring of the world economy have led to fundamental changes that have destroyed the old paradigms of doing business. Whether these changes are on the whole good or bad, or who or what is responsible for bringing them into being, they simply are. Most cities, regions, and US states have extremely limited leverage in this marketplace and thus to a great extent are market takers more than market makers. They have to adapt to new realities, but a lack of willingness to … [Read more...]