Behind the rhetoric about public employees bankrupting cities, there are a few silent drains on city budgets (and now London faces the likelihood that its hopes for a post-Olympics windfall, like nearly every other city in history, won’t materialize.) Sports stadiums are perhaps the biggest single subsidy packages doled out, and nearly every study shoes…
Category: Cities
Los Angeles: doing less with less
The deep local budget cuts made over the past few years are starting to take a toll on local services, although . Los Angeles fire chief was called to the carpet to explain slow response times in Los Angeles (only 61% of emergency calls meet national standards for response times), and he put the issue…
Economic development, or blackmail?
The New York Times is running a terrific series on tax breaks and other subsidies given by governments, especially local and state governments, to corporations that promise jobs and revenue, despite the patent failure of such subsidies to improve the economic situation of communities. This first part of the series features GM, among other companies,…
Detroit: urban austerity as art form
Life at the outer limits of urban austerity: Burn, a new documentary about Detroit’s fire department, tells a story that could perhaps echo throughout many U.S. cities: At a certain point in a city’s decline its financial resources are so diminished that life-or-death services like policing and firefighting have to be cut back at the…
Mayors go to Capital Hill to urge action on the “fiscal cliff”
Mayors from Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and other cities visited Washington, D.C. to talk with lawmakers about the effects of “sequestration” on cities. “Too often,” says Mayor Rybak of Minneapolis, “a line-item cut in Washington one year will lead to an expense in a city the years after.” Scott Smith, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., is…