Cities: January 2008 Archives
Urban Review STL: Beware of the Sweetheart Dell?
Millions in incentives and a year's worth of work by Edmonton's economic development team have gone down the drain: Dell has closed its call center there after only three years of operation. Oklahoma City's Dell call center is losing between 200 and 300 as well.
Townhall.com: Bill Steigerwald: John Norquist and the Lessons of School Choice
Why a Democratic former mayor of Milwaukee and head of the Congress on the New Urbanism supports vouchers and school choice: "I was for vouchers before we established them in Milwaukee. The reason it appeals to me is that it's good for the city, the parents and the kids to have more choices available. Under the old system, before the vouchers, people would shop for school districts. If they had resources, they would tend to move to the school district that was most likely to have the best situation for their kid, which unfortunately often meant moving away from people that were low income.
"When I was mayor of Milwaukee, I wanted people to live in the city -- to want to be in the city -- so the city would be prosperous. I didn't want people to feel sorry for Milwaukee or to look at it as some sort of pathological social problem. I wanted them to look at it as a place where they could get what they wanted in life. So changing the schools was really important and just trying harder under the monopoly system didn't work."
The Wall Street Journal Online: Joel Kotkin: The Rise of Family-Friendly Cities
"Indeed, if you talk with recruiters and developers in the nation's fastest growing regions, you find that the critical ability to lure skilled workers, long term, lies not with bright lights and nightclubs, but with ample economic opportunities, affordable housing and family friendly communities not too distant from work....
"There is a basic truth about the geography of young, educated people. They may first migrate to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or San Francisco. But they tend to flee when they enter their child-rearing years. Family-friendly metropolitan regions have seen the biggest net gains of professionals, largely because they not only attract workers, but they also retain them through their 30s and 40s.
"Advocates of the brew-latté-and-they-will-come approach often point to greater Portland, Ore., which has experienced consistent net gains of educated workers, including families. Yet most of that migration--as well as at least three quarters of the region's population and job growth--has been not to the increasingly childless city, but to the suburban periphery. This pattern holds true in virtually every major urban region."
"Abandoned tunnels are often the object of urban legend, but Cincinnati is in fact the site of the country's largest abandoned subway tunnel. But 'abandoned' is not quite the word, as construction slowed to a stop in 1925 before even half of the 16 mile line was completed. Seven miles between Cincinnati's central business district and the industrial suburb of Norwood were tunneled, bridged, or graded, but no track was laid and no subway cars were ordered. No passengers ever rode between the six stations that were built." (Via vanshnookenraggen.)
BadTransit: "It is a fairly predictable cycle"
Ridership on the Mass. Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) system dropped by 2.3% in a single year -- 8.7 million rides -- due to fare hikes. (Via vanshnookenraggen.)
