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...]
Archives for August 2014
Fixing Corrupt Cities
This is the second installment in my series on corruption. This week I'm taking a look at a book Richard Layman turned me onto. It's called "Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention." Written by Robert Klitgaard with assistance from former La Paz Mayor Rondal Maclean-Abaroa and H. Lindsey Parris, and published under the auspices of the World Bank, this book is a must-read on the topic of corruption even if, sadly, many of the recommendations are not directly applicable to the type of corruption many US cities experience … [Read more...]
Suburbs and Sacred Space
This post originally appeared in New Geography on June 7, 2013. Suburbs are often unfairly maligned as lacking the qualities that make cities great. But one place that criticism can be fair is in the area of sacred space. There most certainly is sacred space in the suburbs, but usually less of it than in the city both quantitatively and qualitatively. In fact, the comparative lack of sacred space is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the suburb that makes it “sub” urban, that is, in a sense lesser than the city. Lewis Mumford … [Read more...]