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Showing posts from August, 2016

Water, the Common Element of Disaster

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It isn't very scientific to string three events together and turn them into a natural law. However, recent so called "natural disasters" in the US should provoke architects, planners and engineers to ponder the issues and ask serious questions with increasing urgency. Water the issue of the 21st Century, environmentally, economically and socially The three events are the ongoing catastrophic wildfires in central and in northern California, the recent flood that ravaged the small historic town of Ellicott City near Baltimore and the historic floods in Louisiana this week. The nearly 6" of rain that fell on Ellicott City, the 25" of rain that fell on Louisiana in three days and explosiveness of the fire in San Bernadino County all were called "unheard of", "never seen before", "historic" or "a 1000 year event". By all accounts these were not just hyped up assessments of the moment, they are born out by the stats of the past.

Do Very Large Cities Have a Future?

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Smart phones keep chirping with unpleasant news. Millions of refugees on the move worldwide, Britain leaving the EU, IS attacks on a gay nightclub in Orlando, a French City on the Cote D'Azur celebrating the national holiday being ambushed by a radicalized truck driver, Istanbul on lock-down because of a military putsch, over a hundred square miles of precious forest on fire near Monterey, California thanks to the ongoing severe drought, locally, near Baltimore, a quaint historic little town dubbed "Main Street America" by Senator Cardin devastated by torrents stemming from a rain fall that should occur only once every thousand years. Even the Olympic games garner more headlines for polluted waters, political instability, the big Brazilian drought and the Zika virus than for the athletes.   Chinese megacity Guangzhou People around the world feel insecure and some are beggining to doubt what they have considered proven and true until now. The crazy turns of the US presiden

TIFs, Economic Development and Social Equity

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Baltimore's Mayor says that other cities would be salivating at the opportunity of having a successful corporation drop $5.5 billion to build its global headquarters and a mixed use new town around it. Even if that corporation would ask for public bonds of  over half a billion dollars through tax increment financing (TIF) and receive $760 million in tax credits for building on a brownfield, in an Enterprise Zone and by utilizing general city apartment tax credits. ULI graphic explaining Tax Increment Financing [...] Port Covington is an amazing opportunity for Baltimore. It’s an amazing opportunity for job creation, for community building. To stabilize one of the fastest-growing companies in the world with Under Armour and to make sure that they continue to have a headquarters here. When cities around the country take a look at the pushback that some in the community are giving to this development they’re salivating, they would love to have Under Armour to invest billions in their