Citiwire.net

For Release Thursday, March 7, 2013
Citiwire.net

To most of us, corporations are as familiar as apple pie, if not as tasty. From the computers we work on to the businesses down the boulevard, we are surrounded by corporations and their labors.

But how many of us know or remember that our cities are also corporations, just the way Apple, IBM and General Motors are? Not only are cities corporations, but in many cases they are far older than any contemporary business, dating back not just decades but centuries.

This may seem strange, but it’s fact.

“There is no difference between Google and San Francisco,” says Harvard law Professor Gerald Frug. In the eyes of the law, he says, they are both corporate bodies, “empowered by government, to do stuff.”

It’s useful to remember that cities are corporations, with a long, distinguished history, because it helps us understand their possibilities and essential makeup. It’s also useful to remember that private companies are corporations, because it helps us remember that corporations don’t create themselves, we do, as part of our democratically elected government.

When you open a business as a company, you get a corporate charter from one of the 50 states. This charter grants you the privilege of being a corporate body, and spells out your rights and privileges.

The same is true for any city that opens its municipal doors.

While private corporations have done great things – I’m typing on a Macintosh computer, with an iPhone in my pocket – we the people are the ultimate arbiters of corporations’ power. Through our legislatures and Congress, we have granted corporations the right to exist, and we have awarded them special rights and powers. We should only continue to do so to the degree they continue to serve our interest, the public interest, as well as any private ones.
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For Release Friday, August 5, 2011
Citiwire.net

There is really no denying that transportation makes money. Just consider the huge shopping malls perched around interstate off-ramps, the office parks positioned close to airports, the skyscrapers next to subway stations.

But transportation itself is usually a money loser. We pour billions of public dollars into highways, airports and transit systems, while others, the home builders, the department store mavens, make the money that comes slows from those public investments.

Hong Kong’s metro system, MTR, has changed this equation, and that is why it’s worth looking at.

If you are ever lucky enough to visit Hong Kong, which is Manhattan-like with its narrow streets lined with high rises, you will see that the MTR’s services are excellent. You may ride the gleaming new high-speed rail line from the new airport that takes you into the new central rail station. Or one of the nine rail and subway lines, including the special train that goes to Disneyland Hong Kong.
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For Release Sunday, November 28, 2010
Citiwire.net

About ten years ago, I was looking for a new bike equipped with something you would think would not be that difficult to find: a chain guard. That is, that sheath of metal that wraps at least partially around the greasy links that help power the bike.

No luck.

“American bicycle manufacturers are overly influenced by the sports market,” said the bicycle shop worker in the Cambridge bike shop I was in, in one of the most succinct analysis of the bike market I had ever heard, as we surveyed the rows of lean and mean machines. It seemed I would have to wait.
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For Release Sunday, April 11, 2010
Citiwire.net

It’s become popular sport to deride the first decade of this century, the 2000-2009 years, as a downhill ride of terrorism, war and economic depression.

But there’s one multi-syllabic word that enjoyed a big comeback, after decades of neglect. That word: infrastructure. We at least began to think about the physical systems that support us, nurture us, and make much of life possible.

I posit that the “aughts,” as they have been called, were in fact a decade of infrastructure breakthroughs. Sure, we didn’t spend enough on it, or even more than in previous decades (I know of no official list of infrastructure projects, so it’s hard to tell). But I would argue that infrastructure did crystalize as a subject in the hearts and minds of the country’s citizens and opinion leaders as a subject worthy of attention and focus. A decade ago, even the word “infrastructure” was hardly known outside the specialized worlds of public works departments. Now editorial writers bandy it about without explanation and debate how much we should spend on it.

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