urban development
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Exorbitant Costs and Minimal Benefits: the Impact of Hosting the Olympics
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Every four years, the world tunes in to watch pageantry, competition, and peak athletic performance at the Summer Olympics. Before the COVID-19 crisis, the 32nd Summer Olympiad was scheduled to take place in Tokyo from late July to early August 2020 and was marketed as the “Recovery Olympics” in light…
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Green Spaces, Gray Cities: Confronting Institutional Barriers to Urban Reform
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In many of the world’s largest urban areas, the basic standards of living set out in the Sustainable Development Goals are woefully out of reach. In the developing world, cities won’t achieve those goals without providing adequate green space. Conceived broadly, green space is anything ranging from parks or clean…
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Crime Prevention for Economic Development: Lessons from Chicago and Los Angeles
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Crime imposes an immense burden on cities, taking its toll in higher policing costs, lower property values, fewer job opportunities, and reduced overall quality of life. High and rising rates of crime are often cited as reasons for businesses not to locate to areas of concentrated poverty. Meanwhile, municipal leaders…
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Should Cities Compete? The Case Against Federal Contracts
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With stagnating wages and declining entrepreneurship across the United States, state and local governments are under increasing pressure to deliver economic good news. Cities are in constant competition, dedicating considerable time and resources to business incentives and vying for federal grants and contracts. Historically, the full extent to which these…
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Beyond Gentrification: How Vacant Lot Upkeep Can Improve Community Safety At An Affordable Price
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If every square block of abandoned land in American cities were placed side-by-side, the area would be larger than the state of Maryland. In fact, nearly 15 percent of all urban land is either vacant or barren. This limits the economic vitality of communities with vast swaths of unused land, which are disproportionately…
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The Fight to End Blight: What Can Cities Do to Minimize Urban Deterioration?
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A study demonstrates the effectiveness of urban containment policies in reducing city blight with the end goal of promoting population growth in downtown neighborhoods.
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District of Change: Gentrification and Demographic Trends in Washington, DC
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A study of household migration behavior in DC reveals long-term regional effects of gentrification.
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Widening the Gap: China’s Land Reform and Gender Disparities
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The main culprit for China’s gender gap expansion in the early 1980s might have been the post-Mao land reform rather than the One Child Policy.