A New Deal for legacy cities
If we want to build the U.S. economy, it makes much more sense to invest in cities that already have cheap land, unused infrastructure, untapped talent and urban scale.
Academics and millennial bloggers think the solution is for existing tech centers like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Boston to repeal single-family zoning laws and build high-density housing for millions of workers. These workers would, somehow, instantly become more productive by working and living next to so many other creative people.
The first is essentially a deregulation strategy that realies almost exclusively on the free market to make the economy more productive and efficient. It assumes something of a "trickle-down" effect to the rest of the country.
Economic development experts think this is economic nonsense. A wide range of studies, including one by the Brookings Institution and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, suggest that the free market is dysfunctional and this is shown in the excessive concentration of tech investment dollars flowing to existing centers even though the creative and efficiency pay-off is minimal. For decades, any company looking for land, office, or factory space could have had it free in America's "legacy cities" from the industrial era, along with tax breaks and government sponsored training for workers desperate for a new beginning. Yet few if any companies were interested. The social and political outcomes are unacceptable and the economic benefits self-defeating. These experts suggest a strategy in which the federal government would use public investment to steer economic growth to places such as Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore and other large "legacy cities" where there are numerous underemployed workers, underutilized infrastructure, cheap land, and plentiful housing.
The only way to revive legacy cities and create new engines of innovation and growth for the U.S. economy is through significant intervention and investment by the federal government.
So don't bet on it.
Academics and millennial bloggers think the solution is for existing tech centers like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Boston to repeal single-family zoning laws and build high-density housing for millions of workers. These workers would, somehow, instantly become more productive by working and living next to so many other creative people.
The first is essentially a deregulation strategy that realies almost exclusively on the free market to make the economy more productive and efficient. It assumes something of a "trickle-down" effect to the rest of the country.
Economic development experts think this is economic nonsense. A wide range of studies, including one by the Brookings Institution and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, suggest that the free market is dysfunctional and this is shown in the excessive concentration of tech investment dollars flowing to existing centers even though the creative and efficiency pay-off is minimal. For decades, any company looking for land, office, or factory space could have had it free in America's "legacy cities" from the industrial era, along with tax breaks and government sponsored training for workers desperate for a new beginning. Yet few if any companies were interested. The social and political outcomes are unacceptable and the economic benefits self-defeating. These experts suggest a strategy in which the federal government would use public investment to steer economic growth to places such as Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore and other large "legacy cities" where there are numerous underemployed workers, underutilized infrastructure, cheap land, and plentiful housing.
The only way to revive legacy cities and create new engines of innovation and growth for the U.S. economy is through significant intervention and investment by the federal government.
So don't bet on it.