By Carl Schramm
Cities that are essentially supplicants to higher levels
of government have one of two paths for planning. One is to become yet more
proficient at supplication; in a bad national economy this path spells further
decline. The other is to imagine rebuilding an economy that achieves scale
growth. Planners never speak to the economic possibilities because apparently
they don’t know how economic growth actually happens.
Going forward we need “proto-dynamic” plans for cities.
They would sketch out an economic path leading to self-sustenance where the
city produces more than it consumes in terms of the larger economy. This is the
only path that will allow a city to anticipate any substantial growth and the
capacity to eliminate poverty for those who live there. To form such a goal a
city has to think of how it can generate sufficient industry to provide jobs
for its unemployed. This must be the first order objective and it eludes
planners because they have no idea of how the complexities of dynamic economies
actually are sparked to life. [more...]
Carl Schramm
is a best-selling
author, economist and entrepreneur and blogs for the George W. Bush Institute.
His column, Messy Capitalism, appears in Forbes. His writing is also published
in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, City Journal and the Harvard
Business Review. He has appeared many times on television as a guest of
Charlie Rose (PBS), Brian Sullivan (CNBC), David Asman and Gerri Willis (Fox
Business).
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