Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

Creating Fertile Soil For Innovation

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I was privileged to give the opening keynote at Governing Magazine's Summit on Performance and Innovation in Louisville last week. Not only was it great to get to speak there in its own right, it's particularly special for me because Louisville is my hometown. My talk was on innovation, the imperative for innovation today, the barriers to innovation, and how to create fertile soil for innovation to flourish. The video is embedded below, but if it doesn't display for you, click over to watch on You Tube. … [Read more...]

Global City Framework

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This is a concept in development, so I'm going to open this post up to comments. Global cities are like that famous quip on obscenity: we know one when we see it. But the definitions of global cities are incredibly varied and there doesn't seem to be a consensus or well-defined way to think about. I looked at the criteria used in various prominent studies back in 2012 and found them highly divergent. Only the Sassen based one appeared to have a robust definition and theoretical basis, but it's a pretty narrow definition. While it's very … [Read more...]

Why the Rent Is Too High, Reason #239

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It's no secret housing costs are high and going higher in major US cities like NYC, San Francisco, etc. I was just tweeting with someone this week who moved back from Park Slope, Brooklyn to Indianapolis because her rent was being raised by over 50% (possibly that's a cumulative increase over time - not sure). Most of the urbanist discussion tends to focus around zoning as the reason prices are high. That's certainly an important factor. But there are also other things driving up costs and rents. The NYT highlighted one of them last Sunday, … [Read more...]

Talking Tuition With Mitch Daniels

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This summer I sat down with Purdue University President Mitch Daniels to talk about his tuition freeze initative there for my City Journal article on the subject. Here's the podcast of that conversation. If the embed doesn't display for you, click over to listen on Soundcloud. Here are some excerpted highlights. Daniels on what's driving costs up: Government has imposed a whole lot of this administrative cost on the colleges. Not all of it, but a lot of it. You know, administrative costs have soared in banks, too. And so there’s some … [Read more...]

London’s Global City Royal Flush

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A recent article in the Economist about the Rosetta space probe reminded me again of the uniqueness of London on the global stage. The piece notes: In a clean room at the Airbus Defence & Space (ADS) factory north of London, scientists are working on LISA Pathfinder (pictured), a hexagon-shaped satellite due to be launched next year. The aim of the ambitious space mission is to try, for the first time, to find and measure gravitational waves–ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. ... About one-quarter … [Read more...]

The Three Ages of Boss Rule

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[ Steve Eide is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and also runs its fiscal policy oriented web site Public Sector, Inc.. After seeing Pete Saunders' piece on the three generations of black mayors in America, he sent me the piece below with the same three generations structure, but talking about political boss rule, using Hollywood as a point of departure. It's a great piece I'm delighted to get to share - Aaron. ] Between roughly the Civil War and World War II, most American cities were at some point dominated by a boss and his … [Read more...]

The Three Generations of Black Mayors in America

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[ This week is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, so I'll be away and enjoying it for the rest of the week. As a holiday long read for you, I'm posting this very important piece about the three generations of black mayors in America and how the timing of the election of the first black mayor affected the trajectory of those cities, with implications even today. Pete is the best writer on urbanism and race that I know and you can read his writings about this and more on his site Corner Side Yard - Aaron. ] The Monument to Joe Louis, … [Read more...]

Two Chicagos, Defined

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[ Here's another nice piece of analysis about Chicago from Pete Saunders. He originally did this earlier this year - Aaron. ] Chicago skyline.  Source: wikipedia.org Years ago, when I first started working as a planner for the City of Chicago, my primary responsibility was working with community organizations that received Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding for commercial revitalization activities.  This being CDBG funding, our work was constrained to areas of the city where 51% or more of households earned less than the … [Read more...]

Building the Responsive City

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The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data Smart Governance by Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford Technology, and especially the use of data and analytics, has been transforming the way cities manage service delivery. Former Indianapolis mayor New York City deputy mayor Steve Goldsmith, and his colleague at Harvard Susan Crawford, recently wrote a book called "The Responsive City" looking at this technology revolution. I recently read the book and posted some thoughts in a review posted at City Journal. Here's an excerpt: The … [Read more...]

The Urbanophile Interview: Portland Mayor Charlie Hales

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I was out in Portland, Oregon last week and while there I sat down for an interview with Mayor Charlie Hales. We talked about the real Portland vs. the idea of Portland, the city's industrial base, retrofitting suburban infrastructure, and a lot more. If the audio doesn't display for you, click over to Soundcloud. Mayor Charlie Hales. Image via Wikipedia Here are some edited highlights of our conversation. For those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is available. Mayor Hales rejects the idea that we will have to … [Read more...]