Airports are much more than places to catch planes, attend an in-transit business meeting, or do some duty-free shopping; they are among the largest investments a city and region make. Earlier I charted the geography of airport activity across U.S. metros. Today I take a close look at how airports effect the economic growth and development of cities and regions. According to John Kasarda these include "time-sensitive manufacturing and distribution; hotel, entertainment, retail, convention, trade and exhibition complexes; and office buildings that house air-travel intensive executives and professionals. The close connection between airports and regional development has been noted in several studies. A careful statistical study by economist Richard Green finds associations between airport passengers and both metro population and employment growth, while controlling for ... Continue reading →
The Quest for High-Tech Solutions in New Mexico “Ghost City”Hobbs | 05/17/2012 1:34pm | CommentsSean Andrew Chen | Next American City CITE be capable of housing 35,000 ostensible people across 400 acres. Credit: Center for Innovation, Testing and EvaluationRemember those videos from the 1950s, depicting small towns set in the beautiful New Mexican desert, picturesque one minute and then vaporized the next by a nuclear blast? Well, New Mexico is about to play host to yet another built-for-science ghost town. But this time, it’s going high-tech.Pegasus Global Holdings, a high-tech development corporation, has recently chosen Hobbs, N.M. as the site for its massive new $1 billion “unpopulated tech city” known as CITE, or Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation. Instead of being destroyed by a ... Continue reading →
Are the mega-condos of Brickell the key to urban vitality and innovation or are they just cul-de-sacs in the sky? In a keynote speech during the 20th Congress for New Urbanism in West Palm Beach, author Richard Florida challenged the idea that the “rush to density” will unlock and release the potential of our cities. “This rush to density, this idea that density creates economic growth,” is wrong, Florida said. “It’s the creation of real, walkable urban environments that stir the human spirit. Skyscraper communities are vertical suburbs, where it is lonely at the top. The kind of density we want is a ‘Jane Jacobs density.’” Vertical cul-de-sacs? Photo courtesy of Paul Morris. In her influential book, Death and Life of American Cities (1961), Jacobs ... Continue reading →
Greg Lindsay, jeopardy champion and author of the book Aerotropolis, has a great post investigating Paul Romer's idea of Charter Cities over at Next American City. Unfortunately, it's a subscription only piece. On the other hand, Next American City is smart enough to set their articles up on an itunes-like pay-to-play a la carte basis. You can get it for 1.99 or join for the year for about 18 bucks. I'm signed up for the year because they're doing great work. Blowing away Atlantic Cities for more in depth, research-driven, long form pieces, IMO. Charter Cities, if you're unaware, is Romer's idea for bringing markets and therefore opportunity to otherwise backwater, third world locations. As Lindsay and Romer's critics correctly point out, sometimes reality gets ... Continue reading →
Great cities are works in progress. Their forms are nurtured over time, left over by generations like layers of geological strata. But in the past few years, the demand for cities has spiked exponentially, with little time allotted for their painstaking maturation. Seven billion people are predicted to live in cities by 2050 — twice the current urban population — and, as if a global biological clock had gone off, government leaders and developers are now attempting to leapfrog centuries of gradual development and erect entirely new capitals from the ground up in Honduras, South Korea, China, and beyond. Yet, as entire metropolises are being built from scratch, the role of the architect remains curiously uncertain. Two theories have emerged at this dawn of rapid ... Continue reading →
