Download or read book Convention Center Follies written by Heywood T. Sanders and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American cities have experienced a remarkable surge in convention center development over the last two decades, with exhibit hall space growing from 40 million square feet in 1990 to 70 million in 2011—an increase of almost 75 percent. Proponents of these projects promised new jobs, new private development, and new tax revenues. Yet even as cities from Boston and Orlando to Phoenix and Seattle have invested in more convention center space, the return on that investment has proven limited and elusive. Why, then, do cities keep building them? Written by one of the nation's foremost urban development experts, Convention Center Follies exposes the forces behind convention center development and the revolution in local government finance that has privileged convention centers over alternative public investments. Through wide-ranging examples from cities across the country as well as in-depth case studies of Chicago, Atlanta, and St. Louis, Heywood T. Sanders examines the genesis of center projects, the dealmaking, and the circular logic of convention center development. Using a robust set of archival resources—including internal minutes of business consultants and the personal papers of big city mayors—Sanders offers a systematic analysis of the consultant forecasts and promises that have sustained center development and the ways those forecasts have been manipulated and proven false. This record reveals that business leaders sought not community-wide economic benefit or growth but, rather, to reshape land values and development opportunities in the downtown core. A probing look at a so-called economic panacea, Convention Center Follies dissects the inner workings of America's convention center boom and provides valuable lessons in urban government, local business growth, and civic redevelopment.
Download or read book The Billionaire Boondoggle written by Pat Garofalo and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do our politicians let the entertainment industry and individuals like Donald Trump bilk taxpayers, hijack public policy and hurt economic investment? It is widely believed, that a city in possession of a fortune must be in want of a partner who will drive economic development and thus be worth a substantial dowry of tax abatements, subsidies, and grants. These partners always prove faithless, though, especially when it comes to the entertainment industry. Never date an actor, as they say. From stadiums and movie productions to casinos and mega-malls to convention centers and hotels, cities and states have paid out billions of dollars to the world's corporate titans in an attempt to boost their economies, create new and better jobs, and lure well-known events such as the Olympics and the Super Bowl to within their borders, not to mention give officials a chance to have their pictures taken with celebrities. That Big Entertainment drives bigger economies is a myth, however, one that has nonetheless permeated every facet of policy making despite the overwhelming evidence that it results in a raw deal for the taxpaying public. In The Billionaire Boondoggle, Garofalo takes readers on a tour of publically-subsidized corporate America to explain how that myth came to be, how much money America's elected officials throw away, and why courting Big Entertainment just courts disaster.
Download or read book The New Chicago Way written by Edgar H Bachrach and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all the wrong reasons, a national spotlight is shining on Chicago. The city has become known for its violence, police abuse, parent and teacher unrest, population decline, and mounting municipal and pension debt. The underlying problem, contend Ed Bachrach and Austin Berg, is that deliberative democracy is dead in the city. Chicago is home to the last strongman political system in urban America. The mayor holds all the power, and any perceived checks on mayoral control are often proven illusory. Rash decisions have resulted in poor outcomes. The outrageous consequences of unchecked power are evident in government failures in elections, schools, fiscal discipline, corruption, public support for private enterprise, policing, and more. Rather than simply lament the situation, criticize specific leaders, or justify an ideology, Bachrach and Berg compare the decisions about Chicago’s governance and finances with choices made in fourteen other large U.S. cities. The problems that seem unique to Chicago have been encountered elsewhere, and Chicagoans, the authors posit, can learn from the successful solutions other cities have embraced. Chicago government and its citizens must let go of the past to prepare for the future, argue Bachrach and Berg. A future filled with demographic, technological, and economic change requires a government capable of responding and adapting. Reforms can transform the city. The prescriptions for change provided in this book point toward a hopeful future: the New Chicago Way.
Download or read book American Cities and the Politics of Party Conventions written by Eric S. Heberlig and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovers the politics involved when a city recruits and implements a presidential convention. Political party conventions have lost much of their original political nature, serving now primarily as elaborate infomercials while ratifying the decisions made by voters in state primaries and caucuses. While this activity hasnt changed significantly since the 1970s, conventions themselves have changed significantly in terms of how they are recruited, implemented, and paid for. American Cities and the Politics of Party Conventions analyzes how and why cities advance through the site selection process. Just as parties use conventions to communicate their policies, unity, and competence to the electorate, cities use the convention selection process to communicate their merits to political parties, businesses and residents. While hosting such a mega-event provides some direct economic stimulus for host cities, the major benefit of the convention is the opportunity it provides for branding and signaling status. Combining a case studies approach as well as interviews with party and local officials, Eric S. Heberlig, Suzanne M. Leland, and David Swindell bring party convention scholarship up to date while highlighting the costs and benefits of hosting such events for tourism bureaus, city administrators, elected officials, and the citizens they represent.
Download or read book Improving Convention Center Management Using Business Analytics and Key Performance Indicators Volume I written by Myles T. McGrane and published by Business Expert Press. This book was released on 2020-09-09 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improving Convention Center Management Using Business Analytics and Key Performance Indicators presents sound practical advice from an author who successfully lived the experience. Transitioning from a traditional business model to one that is data driven and entrepreneurial can be difficult. This book explains the rationale and importance of each indicator along with data collection issues and presentation advice. It guides you through that process from launch and trial, up to making analytics an indispensible part of your management strategy.
Download or read book The Origins of the Dual City written by Joel Rast and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chicago is celebrated for its rich diversity, but, even more than most US cities, it is also plagued by segregation and extreme inequality. More than ever, Chicago is a “dual city,” a condition taken for granted by many residents. In this book, Joel Rast reveals that today’s tacit acceptance of rising urban inequality is a marked departure from the past. For much of the twentieth century, a key goal for civic leaders was the total elimination of slums and blight. Yet over time, as anti-slum efforts faltered, leaders shifted the focus of their initiatives away from low-income areas and toward the upgrading of neighborhoods with greater economic promise. As misguided as postwar public housing and urban renewal programs were, they were born of a long-standing reformist impulse aimed at improving living conditions for people of all classes and colors across the city—something that can’t be said to be a true priority for many policymakers today. The Origins of the Dual City illuminates how we normalized and became resigned to living amid stark racial and economic divides.
Download or read book Research Handbook on City and Municipal Finance written by Craig L. Johnson and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-06 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely Research Handbook explores the handling of city and municipal finances in the 21st century. It examines the impact of the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic on cities and municipalities, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and avenues for future progress in city and municipal financial management.
Download or read book Studying the Power Elite written by G. William Domhoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critiques and extends the analysis of power in the classic, Who Rules America?, on the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication in 1967—and through its subsequent editions. The chapters, written especially for this book by twelve sociologists and political scientists, provide fresh insights and new findings on many contemporary topics, among them the concerted attempt to privatize public schools; foreign policy and the growing role of the military-industrial component of the power elite; the successes and failures of union challenges to the power elite; the ongoing and increasingly global battles of a major sector of agribusiness; and the surprising details of how those who hold to the egalitarian values of social democracy were able to tip the scales in a bitter conflict within the power elite itself on a crucial banking reform in the aftermath of the Great Recession. These social scientists thereby point the way forward in the study of power, not just in the United States, but globally. A brief introductory chapter situates Who Rules America? within the context of the most visible theories of power over the past fifty years—pluralism, Marxism, Millsian elite theory, and historical institutionalism. Then, a chapter by G. William Domhoff, the author of Who Rules America?, takes us behind the scenes on how the original version was researched and written, tracing the evolution of the book in terms of new concepts and research discoveries by Domhoff himself, as well as many other power structure researchers, through the 2014 seventh edition. Readers will find differences of opinion and analysis from chapter to chapter. The authors were encouraged to express their views independently and frankly. They do so in an admirable and useful fashion that will stimulate everyone’s thinking on these difficult and complex issues, setting the agenda for future studies of power.
Download or read book Laws of the Landscape written by Pietro S. Nivola and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 1999-04-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, concerns have been raised about the consequences of relentless suburban expansion in the United States. But so far, government programs to control urban sprawl have had little effect in slowing it down, much less stopping it. In this book, Pietro S. Nivola raises important questions about the continued suburbanization of America: Is suburban growth just the result of market forces, or have government policies helped induce greater sprawl? How much of the government intervention has been undesirable, and what has been beneficial? And, if suburban growth is to be controlled, what changes in public policies would be not only effective, but practical? Nivola addresses these questions by comparing sprawling U.S. metropolitan areas to compact development patterns in Europe. He contrasts the effects of traditional urban programs, as well as "accidental urban policies" that have a profound if commonly unrecognized impact on cities, including national tax systems, energy conservation efforts, agricultural supports, and protection from international commerce. Nivola also takes a hard look at the traditional solutions of U.S. urban policy agenda involving core-area reconstruction projects, mass transit investments, "smart" growth controls, and metropolitan organizational rearrangements, and details the reasons why they often don't work. He concludes by recommending reforms for key U.S. policies--from taxes to transportation to federal regulations--based on the successes and failures of the European experience. Brookings Metropolitan Series
Download or read book American Urban Politics in a Global Age written by Paul Kantor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a selection of readings that represent some of the most important trends and topics in urban scholarship today, American Urban Politics provides historical context and contemporary commentaries on the economy, politics, culture and identity of American cities. This seventh edition examines the ability of highly autonomous local governments to grapple with the serious challenges of recent years, challenges such as the stresses of the lingering economic crisis, and a series of recent natural disasters. Features: Each chapter is introduced by an editor's essay that places the readings into context and highlights their central ideas and findings. Division into three historical periods emphasizes both the changes and continuities in American urban politics over time. The reader is the perfect complement for Judd & Swanstrom's City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban American, 7/e, also available in a new edition (ISBN 0-205-03246-X)
Download or read book Mallparks written by Michael T. Friedman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mallparks, Michael T. Friedman observes that as cathedrals represented power relations in medieval towns and skyscrapers epitomized those within industrial cities, sports stadiums exemplify urban American consumption at the turn of the twenty-first century. Grounded in Henri Lefebvre and George Ritzer's spatial theories in their analyses of consumption spaces, Mallparks examines how the designers of this generation of baseball stadiums follow the principles of theme park and shopping mall design to create highly effective and efficient consumption sites. In his exploration of these contemporary cathedrals of sport and consumption, Friedman discusses the history of stadium design, the amenities and aesthetics of stadium spaces, and the intentions and conceptions of architects, team officials, and civic leaders. He grounds his analysis in case studies of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore; Fenway Park in Boston; Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Nationals Park in Washington, DC; Target Field in Minneapolis; and Truist Park in Atlanta.
Download or read book The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century written by G. William Domhoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-21 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century demonstrates exactly how the corporate rich developed and implemented the policies and created the government structures that allowed them to dominate the United States. The book is framed within three historical developments that have made this domination possible: the rise and fall of the union movement, the initiation and subsequent limitation of government social-benefit programs, and the postwar expansion of international trade. The book’s deep exploration into the various methods the corporate rich used to centralize power corrects major empirical misunderstandings concerning all three issue-areas. Further, it explains why the three ascendant theories of power in the early twenty-first century—interest-group pluralism, organizational state theory, and historical institutionalism—cannot account for the complexity of events that established the power elite’s supremacy and led to labor’s fall. More generally, and convincingly, the analysis reveals how a corporate-financed policy-planning network, consisting of foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups, gradually developed in the twentieth century and played a pivotal role in all three issue-areas. Filled with new archival findings and commanding detail, this book offers readers a remarkable look into the nature of power in America during the twentieth century, and provides a starting point for future in-depth analyses of corporate power in the current century.
Download or read book The Divided City written by Alan Mallach and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.
Download or read book The Infrastructure of Play written by Dennis R. Judd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using in-depth case studies, this volume shows how the infrastructure of tourism has transformed cities throughout North America. It makes clear that the modern urban environment is being thoroughly altered to emphasize the growing tourism sector in such areas as renovated waterfronts.
Download or read book Cities in the Third Wave written by Leonard I. Ruchelman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities in the Third Wave surveys the remarkable transformation that is taking place in urban America. In the belief that technology is the force that has created and recast cities throughout history, this book addresses the important question of how the modern-day technology affects cities today and how it will shape cities in the future.
Download or read book Instruments of Land Policy written by Jean-David Gerber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In dealing with scarce land, planners often need to interact with, and sometimes confront, property right-holders to address complex property rights situations. To reinforce their position in situations of rivalrous land uses, planners can strategically use and combine different policy instruments in addition to standard land use plans. Effectively steering spatial development requires a keen understanding of these instruments of land policy. This book not only presents how such instruments function, it additionally examines how public authorities strategically manage the scarcity of land, either increasing or decreasing it, to promote a more sparing use of resources. It presents 13 instruments of land policy in specific national contexts and discusses them from the perspectives of other countries. Through the use of concrete examples, the book reveals how instruments of land policy are used strategically in different policy contexts.
Download or read book None of the Above written by Shani Robinson and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider’s account of the infamous Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal that scapegoated black employees for problems rooted in the education reform movement. In March of 2013, 35 educators in the Atlanta Public Schools were charged with racketeering and conspiracy—the same charges used to bring down the American mafia—for allegedly changing students’ answers on standardized tests. All but one was black. The youngest of the accused, Shani Robinson, had taught for only 3 years and was a new mother when she was wrongfully convicted and faced up to 25 years in prison. She and her coauthor, journalist Anna Simonton, look back to show how black children in Atlanta were being deprived long before some teachers allegedly changed the answers on their students’ tests. Stretching all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in public schools, to examining the corporate-led education reform movement, the policing of black and brown citizens, and widening racial and economic disparities in Atlanta, Robinson and Simonton reveal how real estate moguls and financiers were lining their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.
