Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

Milwaukee’s Relationship with the Chicago Mega-City Revisited

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[ I am going to take a break until early 2013. See you folks in the New Year. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this piece by David Holmes that follows up on my "Don't Fly Too Close to the Sun" piece. He makes some of the same points I did at the conference, as well as some new ones I found interesting. Bye for now! - Aaron. ] I was intrigued by Aaron’s recent post "Don't Fly Too Close to the Sun Piece" which focused on the relationship between Milwaukee and Chicago and the notion of whether “proximity to Chicago or another mega-city … [Read more...]

Brief Notes from a Trip to Philadelphia

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I've always said that Philadelphia is the biggest city in America you wouldn't notice disappearing. With six million people, it's the sixth largest metro in America. And while, because of the vagaries of metro area definitions, I think that overstates its rank a bit, without a doubt, Philly is one of America's largest metro areas. A 1.5 million people, Philadelphia is also America's 5th largest municipality. So why doesn't Philly loom larger in the national consciousness? When we think of Philly, mostly we think of stuff that happened a long … [Read more...]

The Brief Wondrous Life of the One Dollar Bus

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[ People think New York and they think Manhattan first, or maybe the finer precincts of Brooklyn. But it's an amazingly diverse city. Jefferson Mao grew up in Flushing, Queens, and writes a blog dedicated to that extremely diverse and interesting neighborhood. It's called Flushing Exceptionalism and you ought to give it a look. In this piece reprinted from that blog, he talks about entrepreneurship and the life conditions of the immigrant - Aaron. ] I was there for the entirety of the One Dollar Bus Era in Flushing. It was on a Sunday when … [Read more...]

The Columbus, Indiana Values Proposition

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[ Columbus, Indiana has long been known as a special place. Which is too bad, since unlike most small industrial cities in America, it has actually been a success. Alas, despite its clear superior performance, few places show any interest in trying to replicate the things that made it successful. National Public Radio recently ran a segment on Columbus' famed architecture. In it was another telling quote from town patriarch J. Irwin Miller that sums it up: "Whatever you do in this world, you've got a responsibility and a privilege of doing … [Read more...]

Hoosiers to Pay 80% of Local Tolls for Ohio River Bridges Project

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Update 4/6: The organization behind the polls has put up a web site with raw data and more findings from their scientific survey. Update 4/6: Later reports with more specific data from this poll show that the actual ratio is 74% of the local traffic is Hoosiers, not 80% - still a stunning ratio. The pollster estimates a slightly lower ratio of toll revenue to Indiana - 70%, though it's not clear how they did this math. And finally it looks like Southern Indiana officials are waking up to the fact that they are going to get pimped on this … [Read more...]

Nine Reasons Why Detroit Failed

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My hometown of Detroit has been studied obsessively for years by writers and researchers of all types to gain insight into the Motor City’s decline. Indeed, it seems to have become a favorite pastime for urbanists of all stripes. How could such an economic powerhouse, a uniquely American city, so utterly collapse? Most analysis tends to focus on the economic, social and political reasons for the downfall. One of my favorite treatises on Detroit is The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue, who argues that housing and racial … [Read more...]

The Software of Placemaking

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Using the tech metaphors so common now, we have tended to focus on the “hardware” of place, the land, bricks and mortar. But maybe it is time to think more in terms of the “software”, of how we program and run places day to day. There are two masters who have done this with real estate, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, and they have both been at this with single properties for more than 20 years. One is Dan Biederman of the Bryant Park Corporation, who has made that Midtown Manhattan space one of the world’s most densely used … [Read more...]

The Case for Quality of Space

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Last November I was privileged to be able to speak at a community conversation event in Franklin, Indiana - a town of about 25,000 people south of Indianapolis that is an old county seat on the edge of suburban expansion - sponsored by Indiana Humanities and Ball State University's Bowen Center for Public Affairs. The topic of the evening was quality of space and what, if anything, Franklin should do in this area. There had recently been some big disputes over downtown redevelopment projects I believe. I gave a talk that set the stage for … [Read more...]

Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 4 – A Better Plan

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In the first three parts of this series, I discussed how Indiana so badly botched its negotiation with Kentucky on the Louisville bridges project that its share of the project went up by $200 million at the same time the total project declined in cost by $1.5 billion, how this will result in $432 million being drained out of regular highway funds to cover a resulting tolling gap, how tolling likely results in Indiana paying even more, and the significant risks Indiana has taken on by agreeing to build a tunnel in Kentucky. Amazing as it sounds, … [Read more...]

Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 3 – INDOT’s Mini-Big Dig

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In previous installments in this series I highlighted how Indiana managed to increase its share of the Louisville bridges project by $200 million even as it bragged that the total price tag had gone down by $1.5 billion, how this led directly to Indiana having to allocate $432 million in regular highway funds to the project, and how tolling puts Indiana at significant risk of paying an even greater share of the project. Today I'll highlight how Indiana is stepping into a potential quagmire by agreeing to take responsibility for building a … [Read more...]