Procurement in any context sounds dull and has the reputation of being a painful task you are forced to go through in order to buy something you need. Sascha Haselmayer of CityMart believes there's a different way. He joins me on the podcast to talk about cities using procurement as a problem solving process and engine of government transformation, … [Read More...]
More From Aaron
The Plight of the Midsized Midwest Industrial City
Bloomberg's Justin Fox tweeted out a link to this piece from a professor in Peoria, Illinois who left a coveted tenure-track position because he couldn't bear the thought of living there. Here's an excerpt: What this all boiled down to is that it was massively detrimental to my health and well-being to live in a dying Rust Belt city by myself. … [Read More...]
Portraits of Violence in Chicago
Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here, returns with a new book called An American Summer that is an extremely powerful portrait of the impact of violence in Chicago. It's hard to really review a book that is a collection of people's stories, but I have one up over at City Journal. An American Summer a very moving and disturbing work … [Read More...]
The Quest for Human Flourishing
I recently sat down with Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Harvard School of Public Health. He's also the director of the Human Flourishing Program, which was the subject of our recording. What is human flourishing? What is the state of it in society today? What can we do to improve our own … [Read More...]
Cities Could Use More People Who Care Less
I wrote my latest piece about Providence, but it could apply to a lot of cities. It's a bit of contrarian take on civic engagement. For some people, too much civic engagement can result in a fixation on problems, which then turns them negative on the community. This makes the grass look greener in other places. Whereas if they just enjoyed the good … [Read More...]
A New Mayor for Chicago and Congestion Pricing for New York
My colleague Nicole Gelinas and I recorded a podcast for City Journal recently about recent developments in New York and Chicago. She talked about New York's approval of congestion pricing and I covered the Chicago mayoral election. If the audio player doesn't display for you, click over to listen on … [Read More...]
New Census Estimates Reveal Continuing American Divergence
The Census Bureau today released new county and metro area level estimates for population. In my latest article for City Journal, I take a look at some of the trends. Here's an excerpt: Ninety-four metro areas, representing about a quarter of the nation’s total, lost population last year on a region-wide basis. This includes nine major metros of … [Read More...]
The Future of the Urbanophile
As you've probably noticed, there's been a slow-down in the posting frequency in 2019. Last year I tried to publish almost every business day. That was going well and readership was up. But it was also very time consuming. So I made the decision to cut back and essentially eliminate blogging. My plan is to continue to post here the articles and … [Read More...]
The Philadelphia Revival Story
My latest piece will be in this Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer but is already available online now. It's about the nascent revival in Philadelphia over the past decade, and its relevance, or rather lack of relevance, to many other struggling cities in Pennsylvania. Here's an excerpt: In many ways the city has been ideally positioned for new … [Read More...]
Chicago: Past, Present, Future
I gave a talk recently at the Chicago Booth School of Business about Chicago and while I was not able to record it, I decided to reprise my talk as a podcast. I give a very brief narrative overview of the city's history, it's present day strengths, the challenges it faces, and ideas for the future. If the podcast doesn't display for you, click over … [Read More...]
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