Investing in OZones For Wealth Creation . . . and/or To Narrow The Inequality Gap??

Don't know about you, dear readers, but how much more commentary can we take on here in The Old Donut-Hole we call home? It's all been spelled-out over-and-over again to heed the warnings and see the results and outcomes here in downtown Mesa. . . .it's all getting played-out here now where two words are missing in the massive make-over from an inflow of mostly-Mormon millions in investments from Salt Lake City for wealth creation.
However, two words appear to be missing in Mesa: inclusive and equitable.
Here in the desert of The Valley of The Sun it's not likely that the rising salty tide will float everybody's boats (to borrow a phrase from former Mesa City Manager Mike Hutchinson.)

In a recent article by Jim Walsh in the East Valley Tribune last weekend, John Giles is quoted as saying "he isn't the first mayor to go to Salt Lake for investments . . ." He's got that right - he is the 40th in the line-of-succession when he ascended into office starting off in LDS Stakes as you can see memorialized in this bronze plaque mounted on stone >
(For those inclined to walk around the sidewalks here in The Old Donut-Hole it's in front of what used to be City Hall now the Arizona Museum of Natural History on Macdonald St)
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Invest In Cities To Narrow The Inequality Gap

Roger Trapp , Contributor Oct 31, 2017 @ 05:10 PM

"As with the U.K.'s decision to leave the E.U., the rise of Donald Trump and the rest of it, there is no shortage of commentaries on the growing problems in cities around the world. What there is much less of is realistic proposals for dealing with the issues that have given rise to these phenomena. Fortunately, when it comes to cities, there is Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, which explained how a new generation of people was reviving ailing industrial centres. Now, he is explaining how that trend is, among other factors, helping to intensify the issues confronting many urban centres. The New Urban Crisis is subtitled "Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequality and What We Can Do About It", and, while Florida's analysis of how we got here is unsurprisingly insightful, it is that last bit that is crucial. . . 

As a man who has made understanding the workings of cities his life's work, Florida is in no doubt about the importance of the issue. He writes: "The very same clustering force that generates economic and social progress also increasingly divides us demographically, culturally and politically. Winner-take-all urbanism means that a few big winners capture a disproportionate share of the spoils of innovation and economic growth, while many more places stagnate or fall further behind. . . 
Nor does the issue end there. Florida explains how the breadth of the crisis helps us understand why, even a decade after the financial crisis, economic anxiety remains a real feature of many people's lives and indeed continues to rise. The fact that is now the suburbs rather than inner cities where poverty is most prevalent only underlines the extent to which middle-class dreams of a better life have been dashed in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. Florida suggests that the urban crisis is "a big part of the reason why the economies of the advanced nations have been unable to recover fully from the economic crisis and remain mired in what some call 'secular stagnation'."
Acknowledging that some economists favor a New Deal-style stimulation approach to invest in infrastructure with the aim of recreating the middle-class jobs that appeared in the U.S. and elsewhere after the Second World War, Florida warns against a piecemeal approach. "For infrastructure to really put the economy back on its feet, it must be part of a broader strategy for clustered, urbanised growth," he writes . . . . . . he accepts that summoning up the political will to confront the crisis will not be easy.

Nevertheless, he believes that - although the task is huge - it is not insurmountable. He calls for cities and urbanism to be put at the very centre of the agenda for economic prosperity and proposes a strategy for "a more productive urbanism". . .

• Make clustering work for us and not against us
• Invest in the infrastructure for density and growth
• Build more affordable rental housing
• Turn low-wage service jobs into middle-class work
• Tackle poverty by investing in people and places
• Lead a global effort to build prosperous cities
• Empower cities and communities

There are clearly roles for political, civic and business leaders in all of these.
But it is in the last that there is perhaps the greatest leadership challenge.

 READ MORE > Forbes Editors Pick 

(Image of Mesa Mayor John Giles from Twitter while he was in Washington DC recently for a get-together about infrastructure at The White House)
Did he have a revelatory moment?
. . . mebbe________________________________________________________________

THE BOOK
Our cities drive innovation and growth, but they also propel us into housing crises and give rise to ever-greater inequality, as the super-rich displace the well-off, and the workers who run our essential services are ghettoised and pushed out to the suburbs. There is a New Urban Crisis, and it is undermining the foundations of our society.
In this bracingly original work of research and analysis, leading urbanist Richard Florida demonstrates how our cities are evolving in the twenty-first century, for good and for ill. From the world's superstar metropolises to the urban slums of the developing world, he shows how the crisis touches all of us, and sets out how we can make our cities more inclusive, ensuring prosperity for all.

- https://oneworld-publications.com/the-new-urban-crisis-hb.html

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