Subject: Economic Development

  • Investing in Communities Key to Obamanomics

    With the Dems convening in Denver, the New York Times Magazine offered us David Leonhardt’s review of ‘Advanced Obamanomics’ on Sunday, August 24. In light of the Obama campaign re-launching his urban agenda today, it is timely to consider economics…

  • Baltimore: What The NYT Didn’t See Fit to Print

    Editor’s Note: The sixteenth and seventeenth paragraphs of this post have been revised to clarify the controversy over the two research studies mentioned. Johns Hopkins has a complex and mixed relationship with the mostly black residents of the east Baltimore…

  • With Rising Property Taxes, Should Non-Profits Now Pay Their “Fair Share”?

    It’s tight here in New Jersey. And it’s because it’s crowded. With 8.7 million people, we are 11th in the country in population, but first in population density in the Union with over 1,100 people per square mile. We’re also…

  • The Governor’s Budget Non-strategy

    It wouldn’t be surprising to see non-Californians still do a double-take when the title “Governor” is applied to former on-screen cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was admittedly a lot weirder at the beginning here for us, but we’re mostly over it…

  • Tuscany, Barcelona, Croatia… the Rust Belt?

    This weekend, the New York Times suggested Pittsburgh as a destination (for at least 36 hours) alongside these locales, and as of my writing this post, the article remains the most popular in the paper’s travel section. This isn’t the…

  • Inclusive Growth, Identity, Poverty-Alleviation, and Freedom

    I am writing from India, where last week a small but significant convening took place. Some 250 experts (business leaders, academics, and other thinkers) from 25 countries came together for a two-day conference in Mumbai, India, titled The Responsibility to…

  • Crackdown Rocks Real-Estate Industry

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that the Justice Department has indicted more than 400 defendants in 144 mortgage fraud cases. The indictments, part of a sting operation that began on March 1, was designed to “combat the threat…

  • Defining the Creative Economy People

    I was pleased to hear at a recent planning workshop that the definition of the creative economy has been expanded. As popularized by Richard Florida in his first book on the subject, the term seems to refer largely to professionals…

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    Do New Yorkers Need an Emerald City?

    The Christian Science Monitor reported a few days ago on the Bloomberg administration’s plans to redevelop the Willets Point industrial area of Queens (just east of Shea Stadium) as a mixed-income development with 5,500 units of housing and a new…

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    “Let’s Refuel America”

    According to a report in The New York Times Monday, auto sales are down by more than a million compared to 2007’s 16.2 million cars sold. Auto lenders are less likely to lend to customers with less-than-stellar credit, and home…