This is both a standalone piece and a bit of a bridge between the first installment in my Las Vegas Downtown Project overview and the second one. One thing I consistently heard from the people in Vegas was their pride about the sense of community they had downtown. Tony Hsieh says it is the most community oriented place he's lived. One of the Downtown Project official goals is to make Las Vegas the most community-oriented downtown in the world. There's certainly a big sense of community in downtown Las Vegas. I don't want to diminish that … [Read more...]
Tony Hsieh and the Las Vegas Downtown Project
The Downtown Project in Las Vegas, an attempt to completely reinvent downtown Las Vegas spearheaded by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, is one of the better known downtown revitalization initiatives in America. I've been planning to write on it since I saw Tony speak about it in Providence last fall. I was kicked in the pants to finally do so by a trip I took to Vegas last week to check the Downtown Project out. Before going any further, I should disclose that I stayed there for free in one of the project's "crash pad" apartments (more on those … [Read more...]
Chicago’s Daley Deals
Politics + Projects = Planning......And The Deal Beyond Daley Chicago has trouble beating its rap portrayed in the popular media these days. So do the Daleys. Three books give a balanced description of what The Daley Years got done, focusing on the son’s service as Mayor from 1989 to 2011. By reviewing these books in context, this essay suggests that two key tasks in completing Chicago’s transformation -- revitalized poorer neighborhoods and improved transit -- requires sacrifice from taxpayers and a new deal. Richard M. Daley was raised … [Read more...]
Milwaukee’s Future as Part of Greater Chicagoland
Last summer I was invited to speak at a conference called "Milwaukee's Future in the Chicago Megacity" put on by the Marquette University School of Law and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It was an interesting day of conversation about mega-regional integration between the two metros. In follow-up, Marquette Lawyer magazine asked me to write a piece for them about it. I'm including the full text of that article below. However, the current issue of the magazine has a couple of other major articles on the same topic. These are "Thinking and … [Read more...]
Worcester v. Providence: Is Downtown Revitalization the Sum of Urban Revitalization? by Stephen Eide
Worcester, MA and Providence, RI invite comparison for at least four reasons. They’re the same size (pop. ~180,000), they share the same history of deindustrialization and urban decline, they’re only 40 miles apart, and they’re different, which makes comparison stimulating and worthwhile. By most any fiscal or economic measure, Worcester outperforms Providence. But because of the so-called Renaissance, the revitalization of downtown Providence throughout the 1980s and 90s, Providence has attracted far more attention among urbanists and the … [Read more...]
Parallel Societies
This post originally ran on November 11, 2009. Until recently I had an apartment in the Fountain Square neighborhood of Indianapolis. Fountain Square is a small commercial node surrounded by houses on the near southeast side of the city that has long been my favorite 'hood in the city. I've been hanging out in the area for over 15 years. Fountain Square was a sort of lower working class neighborhood. The South Side of Indianapolis is notably more Southern in character than the north. In fact, some have said that Washington St. (or I-70) … [Read more...]
The Problem of Innovation
This post originally ran on February 6, 2011. And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, that Elias is come already, and they knew him not...Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. - Matthew 17:10-13Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass that, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it … [Read more...]
NYU’s Marron Center and the School of the City
Camus said that the ultimate question of philosophy is: Why not kill yourself? For urban studies, that question might be: Why start yet another urban studies institute? This is certainly top of mind as New York University trumpeted a $40 million gift from Donald Marron to form and endow the Marron Institute on Cities in the Urban Environment. In part, as Marron Institute Director Revesz notes, it is to bring order to the large number of other urban oriented or related institutes already at NYU, saying, “The Marron Institute isn’t just … [Read more...]
How to Reinvent a City in a Way That Is Embraced by a City
Two recent columns on the Urbanophile, one by Angie Schmitt called “A Culture of Corruption” and another by Aaron called “Do Cities Really Want Economic Development?” discuss how the forces of the status quo fight change. But sometimes you can create a new strategy for a place, based on its values, that will better embrace those values than what is happening now. This takes visionary leadership, as well as a “small is beautiful” approach to change as something that happens in the moment. The Politics of Identity In Detroit, the main problem … [Read more...]
Why Cities Matter
Why Cities Matter by Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard Pretty much everybody doing anything today has to be thinking about how to respond to urbanism, especially in a global but also a developed world context. While it's clearly too early to proclaim the "death of the suburb" clearly cities have experienced a resurgence. New York, LA, and San Francisco are at all time population highs. The District of Columbia and Philadelphia grew for the first time since 1950 according to the latest census. Religion has been one of those movements that has … [Read more...]
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