Rolls-Royce Logo on Building in Downtown Indianapolis. Photo courtesy Gary Glover.While driving up and down Boston's Route 128, I've often noticed the various tech company logos that adorn the office buildings - Oracle, SAP, Adobe, etc. Interestingly, most of the ones that catch my eye aren't Boston area based companies. Yet the presence of these blue-chip tech names on the buildings reinforces in my mind that Boston is a tech center. I had a similar thing happen when I was in Indy last fall. Rolls-Royce - which actually manufactures … [Read more...]
Archives for 2013
Are You a Consumer or a Producer?
Cities like New York offer a nearly unlimited range of pastimes, diversions, and consumption activities. If you want to have a good meal, see a top notch arts performance, shop, etc., this is the place for you. You can get more quantity of quality in the world's biggest cities than you can anywhere else. The question I often ask though, is whether most of the people living there and partaking of what the city has to offer in fact are part of helping to create those things apart from spending money on them. While anyone with a job or who does … [Read more...]
What Assets Should We Privatize?
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that New York has scrapped its plans to privatize parking meters. It's no secret that I've generally been a critic of long term privatization deals for on-street parking. The reason is simple. Parking meters are not a capital asset like a toll bridge, nor are they a traditional city service like garbage collection. Rather, parking meters are an urban planning tool we use to manage access to precious on-street real estate. As the way we will want to manage this real estate over time will change, it's … [Read more...]
The Strategic Case for Mass Transit in Indianapolis
Andrea Neal had a column in the Indianapolis Star last week called "Mass transit just isn't a good fit for Indy." This piece argues, basically, that because Indianapolis is low density, transit won't work there. Let me first say that I agree Indy is low density and transit is not something that's needed to address a serious, near term transport issue, save for the embarrassing state of the basic bus network. However, for a place like Indianapolis, the real case for transit is strategic. In a nutshell, the urban core of Indianapolis is … [Read more...]
Mumbai Is a Beautiful City
[ Rameshwari Takle is an Indian native who came to the US to study architecture at IIT. She was kind enough to write this piece for us about Mumbai, Indian, where she previously lived - Aaron. ] Photo Credit: Flickr/Dey“Mumbai is a beautiful city, but a terrible place” ~ Architect Charles CorreaAfter having lived in Mumbai for almost 8 years, I completely agree with the above statement. How much ever ironic it sounds, the city of Mumbai is extremely beautiful in its own essence, yet it is a terrible place to live. It is a city of extremes. … [Read more...]
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