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 money waster of the highest order, and in fact by far the biggest American transportation boondoggle I can identify in the 21st century so far. Part of the agreement between Indiana and Kentucky … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2018
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 pace of life in cities." Its work was in "deriving growth equations which quantify the dramatic difference between growth fueled by innovation versus that driven by economies of scale. This difference … [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 more analysis over the next several days, but this shows that the superstar effect is alive and well. Amazon chose note one but two elite coastal cities for its new headquarters. There's no other way … [Read more...]