My latest piece is online in City Lab. It's another look at urban branding. Here's an excerpt. The problem with the typical approach extends beyond just marketing. It has tangible consequences. A brand is really a city’s conception of itself. By selling itself as a facsimile of something its not, a city ends up turning that into reality. Thus, so … [Read More...]
More From Aaron
President Pete?
My latest piece is online at City Journal. It's a look at the improbable presidential candidacy of South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg. Some excerpts: Buttigieg has the impressive résumé one would expect from an aspiring presidential candidate. Born in South Bend, he was valedictorian of his high school, then went to Harvard and received a … [Read More...]
New York City’s Infrastructure Future
My latest podcast features Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association in New York. We talk about his very unique organization, the threat to the region posed by the Amtrak and commuter rail tunnels under the Hudson River, resolving the New York region's governance dysfunction, the highest priority infrastructure needs in the region, and … [Read More...]
The Overlooked Opportunity in the High-Tech Industrial Economy
Long time commenter and guest post contributor Rod Stevens, a real estate and economic development consultant at Business Street, joins me for the inaugural podcast of 2019 to talk about the overlooked opportunities in high tech industrial economic development. People tend to think of high tech as software or biotech, but there's often an … [Read More...]
Coastal Branding Tactics for Heartland Cities
Indianapolis Monthly magazine just ran an interesting feature article on Gwendolyn Rogers, proprietor of a local store called the Cake Bake Shop. I have never been to it and am not the target market. But I thought there were a few interesting elements to it that are relevant not just to marketing businesses but cities. Rogers is not an … [Read More...]
Louisville Bridges Project Is the Biggest Transportation Boondoggle of the 21st Century
I have been a steadfast critic of the project to build two new bridges across the Ohio River in Louisville for over a decade. In fact, my first critical post on the bridges proposal was put up in 2007 less than six months after starting my original Urbanophile blog. The end result was even worse than I anticipated. The project has proven to be a … [Read More...]
The Other Side of the Superstar Effect
A couple of folks had interesting counterpoints to the superstar effect. Neil Strickland gave me permission to post the following email he sent: I wonder if you've read, or if I've referred to, the Santa Fe Institute's highly cited 2007 paper in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) called "Growth, Innovation, Scaling, and the … [Read More...]
Superstar Effect Wins Again as Amazon Chooses New York, Washington for HQ2/3
Amazon, obviously embarrassed at the way their HQ2 process has been received, leaked the results of the competition the night before Election Day, ensuring coverage will be largely muted. Amazon has reportedly decided to split HQ2 between two locations, New York City (Long Island City, Queens) and Washington (Crystal City, VA). I will have … [Read More...]
Governor Mitch Daniels vs. Purdue University President Mitch Daniels
Mitch Daniels has been fairly highly regarded both for his tenure as governor of Indiana and as president of Purdue University. Obviously he has critics, especially those who differ with his politics. But it's clear Mitch is a man of ideas and has done a pretty good job at implementing them. Many Republicans still lament that he decided against … [Read More...]
Why Are State Boundaries So Significant?
There was some debate about why state boundaries, which seem irrelevant in many ways as they don't reflect real economic geographies (or often even cohesive communities) and are only sometimes on natural boundaries. Here again is are the 50 "Facebook States of America" from the NYT piece I posted last week. A lot of people went straight … [Read More...]
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