The Right Investment Model When Big Business Comes to Town

MIT COLAB, December 23, 2019

We should always critically assess the proposed public benefit from efforts to use public money (some would say lavishly in Amazon’s case), to lure wealthy businesses to the city in the name of development. But relying, as we have for the past decades, on corporate tax subsidies to drive urban development lacks imagination and leaves vast resources on the table that could otherwise create more robust and enduring pathways to wealth creation.  I know, because I was born, and still live, in the country’s poorest urban county, the Bronx, NY, where we are now experimenting with such approaches. With inequality accelerating, they should be a regular part of the urban development discourse. Read more