Showing posts with label vibrant cities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vibrant cities. Show all posts

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Let go of Adam's teat and read about ways to make cities sustainable.


But campaign finance monetization.

To Make Cities More Sustainable, Let Go of Tradition, by Richard Florida (City Lab)

“Things aren’t right in America today”: In his important new book on social innovation, Gabriel Metcalf—executive director of the urban policy think tank SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association) and a CityLab contributor—opens with this all-too-familiar sentiment. Rising inequality, deepening segregation, and increasingly unaffordable housing are just a few of the many problems currently plaguing the U.S. These issues are no more evident than in America’s dense, large urban communities, which boast some of the greatest technology and innovation in the world, but also some of the harshest economic and class divides.

To make things right, Metcalf argues in Democratic by Design: How Carsharing, Co-ops, and Community Land Trusts Are Reinventing America, we need to make more and better use of alternative institutions like cooperatives and community land trusts to help build more sustainable, socially responsible, and prosperous communities.

Friday, December 06, 2013

Hicks: "Efforts to lure a new factory in hopes it will spur economic growth is like filling the bath tub during a house fire. "

The author looks at long-term economic changes, and comes to a conclusion of vibrancy. Has New Albany's economic development team read this article?

OPINION: Fantastic towns have a vibrancy that makes them grow, not just factories, in the Indiana Economic Digest

Michael J. Hicks, PhD, is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and a professor of economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. His column appears in Indiana newspapers.

 ... Well, in 1940 the only vibrant cities had big factories, rail yards and lots of associated workers. In 2010 the only vibrant cities had lots of people in many occupations whose product is mostly consumed locally. This doesn’t mean there aren’t a few fantastic towns with factories, but it is the vibrant town that ultimately makes the difference.

This begs the question, "If this is so, why is our community so dead-set on luring the next factory to town instead of making our town a good place to live?" The answer here is simply that too many folks simply don't know what else to do.