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During the past few decades, “industrial policy” was an epithet, and you still won’t see Obama going around calling his “green jobs” projects industrial policy in speeches any time soon. But some think it’s time to shed the stigma, and the flagship Obama industrial policy seems to be electric vehicles – or more specifically, the batteries that power them: “It was a calculated risk — a lot of money, to be sure, but given the stakes, I think it was a pretty thoughtful bet,” says Ron Bloom, who recently served as an assistant to President Obama for manufacturing policy. “If vehicle electrification really does take off, as many, many people think it will, and we’re not part of it, then we could lose our leadership of the global automobile industry.” Which would be catastrophic. By some estimates, as much as 20 percent of all manufacturing jobs are directly or indirectly related to the automobile industry. Bloom points out that the United States is not the only country betting on batteries; a number of Asian countries have done so as well. And if a bunch of Asian countries jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? The Times calls it “less like Google and more like Ford,” and I’m not sure if they mean that as a bad thing. I’m not going to lay out a long case against electric cars right now, but suffice it to say I think they’re just another subsidy to the auto-based system, and that the true environmental harm in cars is not their actual emissions, but the land use patterns than they necessitate, and an electric battery doesn’t change this one bit. I’m certainly not going to lay the blame on urbanists for Obama’s electric car infatuation, but I think it should be a wake-up […]

I’ve you have any interesting in Philadelphia or architectural history, you should be reading Philaphilia (scroll down past the weird drawing – I know). I think the Empty Lot of the Week feature (most recent one here) is my favorite. That is all.

Here’s something to keep in mind when you hear mayors making plans for things like designated green energy zones or tech clusters: Q: Has anything surprised you about downtown’s recovery? A: This was always a financial center. Now we have a lease for a million square feet from Condé Nast. That is a change. The diversity has been a surprise to me. That’s from a Crain‘s interview with Larry Silverstein, whose firm is building the 1 World Trade Center. It’s going to be a big building, no doubt, but it’s not a neighborhood. If Larry Silverstein couldn’t predict what kind of company would be the anchor tenant in this one tower, how can we trust cities to pick the futures of entire neighborhoods? Some of the plans – call them neighborhood industrial policies – can be quite elaborate. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, for example, calls for a “technology centre” with a “food processing enterprise incubator.” But how often does this sort of government urban-industrial planning work out? Silicon Valley (computer technology) and Singapore (biotech) both had their genesis in state-funded universities, though Singapore’s biotech sector was much more intentional than Silicon Valley’s tech industry. Financial hubs like London and Delaware and trade hubs like Hong Kong also required a certain amount of government foresight, in the form of good – i.e., laissez-faire – financial regulations and trade policies. But Vancouver isn’t a city-state, and Mayor Robertson can’t found a university or opt out of Canada’s federal patent laws. Most of these sorts of zones are implemented solely on the local level, which generally means targeted tax breaks, subsidies, and zoning set-asides. But while these might make great ribbon-cuttings and talking points, they are tepid policy tools at best, and I don’t believe any major agglomeration has […]

Controversy over the construction of high speed rail in California provides a glaring example of the rigidity inherent in using infrastructure projects as economic stimulus. A state study suggests that the Central Valley is not the most efficient location to begin the project’s construction, and that construction should begin in a population center such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. However, US Department of Transportation officials said funding would be revoked with a major change to existing plans because construction must begin by 2012.  The LA Times reports: Until those issues could be addressed, analysts called on the rail authority to push back its federally required construction deadline and consider relocating the initial segment to a major urban area where there was more potential for trains to run sooner. Analysts further recommended that the Legislature not spend any more money on the project if the federal government did not allow the changes in the route and construction schedule. Because the federal funding for the project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the project must be comply with the federal timeframe. However, for the long-run benefit of California residents, the flexibility to adjust plans as the market is reassessed makes more sense than adhering to the stimulus schedule. Furthermore, many politicians and academics have questioned whether or not the train will be a long-run drain for California taxpayers.  The federal funding is contingent upon $9 billion in state bonds to fund construction of the rail line, but will allegedly be operated at a profit by a private company once construction is complete. In fact, Proposition 1A that voters passed to fund the project forbids subsidies to the train operator. The rarity of profitable high-speed rail systems and the US track record of rail subsidies call into question the feasibility […]