Commercial growth, civic engagement, business solutions, and smart policy.
Starting a business can be hard. After coming up with that award-winning idea, you must figure out endless logistics in order to get yourself off the ground. Who will you ask to join your innovative team? How will you come up with the money to fund your endeavors? Where will your business thrive and eventually … [Read more…]
A little personal news: I just got back from the Washington Ideas Forum, where I was invited to a dinner with some leading thinkers on smart cities. Much of the conversation went above my head, but I ended up leaving with a few takeaways.
DC would be better served by building more condos, not by growing more expensive tomatoes that make yuppies feel good about themselves.
I have to say, at the beginning, I was skeptical of the Internet of Things. Yes, I concede many smart devices are useful—even indispensable! Smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, even smart lights, speakers, and routers make sense to me. But I draw the line at smart forks, smart plates, and smart fridges. These tools won’t catch … [Read more…]
Examining liberals’ cognitive dissonance: Gentrification is caused by economic forces. To alleviate its harm, demand stronger affordable housing requirements, don’t blame the new neighbors.
Regional mobility has been on a steady decline for decades. There just aren’t any good reasons to move anymore.
I started reading Jeff Speck’s new book Walkable City this week. I’m only a few dozen pages in, but one stat jumped out at me early on. Portland is, in many ways, the paragon of urban planning success. While other cities were focused on easing traffic by widening highways, Portland implemented a strict urban growth boundary, inside … [Read more…]