The Unapologetic City, plus my new blog
This week's Looking Up, The Unapologetic City, would be the introduction to my thesis if I were going for an urban planning or public administration masters. On a drive out of Albany and through Delmar a month or two ago, something just clicked for me about what never gets said in all these reports on "weak market," "third tier," or "rust belt" cities that I'd been slogging through for weeks. The nutshell:
"Cities are described as places to be pitied and to be helped back on their feet because it’s the right thing to do, or possibly because otherwise their troubles will spread outward. At most, they can’t compete because the suburbs have all these unfair advantages. This isn’t exactly wrong. But it’s partial, and it’s patronizing. . . . Let me say this baldly: Suburbs, even today, would be up a fiscal creek without a paddle without their center cities."
And that's not a bad column with which to introduce my new blog, The Big Questions: The path to Albany's first comprehensive plan. It's still bare bones, and needs things like tags and links and RSS set up, but there's content, and there will soon be more. We wanted to get it launched before the comprehensive plan enabling legislation goes before the full Common Council on Monday. If you've got any interest in Albany and this process, check it out. If you don't, well, you'll be spared me being tempted to blather at length about it here.