The selloff begins… The overall estimate — which Christie’s said would total between $454 million and $867 million — covers about 2,800 pieces, or less than 5 percent of the institute’s entire collection because Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn D. Orr, asked Christie’s to focus only on pieces that had been bought with city funds. The…
Author: sh
More than one way for a city to die
There has been a lot of press lately, nationally and locally, about the skyrocketing cost of living and doing business in San Francisco. While all that money keeps the city in better fiscal shape than most places in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of life for San Franciscans. In fact, it kills…
Possible Boeing Move Worries Washington State – NYTimes.com
Boeing is shopping for a location, threatening to leave Washington and take with it more than 80,000 jobs. Parallels are being drawn to Detroit, of course, and the “death spiral” that followed the automobile industry’s departure from that city. Alas, in both good times and bad companies are able to get localities to engage in…
Report: Detroit bankruptcy caused by state cuts, shrinking tax base, not long-term debt | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
While we wait for the federal judge to rule on Detroit’s petition for bankruptcy, a Demos report enters the fray: WASHINGTON — A New York-based think tank released a report today questioning Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s assertion that the city’s long-term debt is responsible for its fiscal problems, or that pension contributions are at…
Peter Marcuse on Participatory Budgeting
I’ve just discovered Peter Marcuse’s blog on critical planning, and the post at the top is on participatory budgeting. Marcuse’s 1981 article “The targeted crisis: on the ideology of the urban fiscal crisis and its uses” has been instrumental in framing my dissertation, so I’m excited to see that he’s turning his attention to city…