Money & Financing posts, articles, and infographics

The Price of Public Green Space

February 1, 2012 by the polis blog
with 118 views

A New Orleans public housing development on the verge of demolition. Source: The Bag Is it possible to assign a monetary value to public green space in cities? Alex Lo recently published an assessment of methods based on choice modeling and cost-benefit analysis. He focuses on the contingent value method (... [read more]

Transforming the market for electric cars: The solution to "Range Anxiety"

January 31, 2012 by Steve Offutt
with 134 views

Building the market for electric cars presents a tricky conundrum: charging. People are less likely to want to buy an electric car if they are uncertain about being able to get it charged, and charging stations are not likely to pop up to serve these vehicles if there are few electric cars around. This fear of running out of... [read more]

Does Car + Bike = A Good Thing?

January 24, 2012 by Patrick Lydon
with 368 views

Besides gaining ultra-buff legs, many ‘part-time’ bike commuters end up with an extra $12,400 at the end of the year. Earlier this month, I wrote a piece about how Rush Hour can Save you Money, it compared a typical Silicon Valley commute using a car, and the same commute using a bicycle. At the end of the article, a breakdown of... [read more]

End Comes for Many California Redevelopment Agencies

January 24, 2012 by Next American City
with 28 views

How many jobs will be lost following the Alhambra agency’s dissolution? Credit: Wikipedia user Jey0hThis piece originally ran in the Alhambra Source. It concerns an example of how a recent California state law dissolving redevelopment agencies affects local communities. The Alhambra Redevelopment Agency will cease to exist as of February... [read more]

Defying Criticism, U.K. Government Finalizes Plans for High-Speed Rail

January 18, 2012 by Next American City
with 47 views

Whatever the recession’s effects on government budgets, infrastructure development in Europe continues to advance at a steady pace. The United Kingdom government affirmed last week that it would move forward with the construction of a £18.8 billion ($29 billion) high-speed link between London and Birmingham, due for opening in 2026. This in spite of draconian cuts across all sorts of public services, both in Britain and across the continent. [read more]

The Economics of Sustainable Cities

January 17, 2012 by Rashiq Fataar
with 316 views

Money is tight in today’s cities. We’ve lived with challenges of the ‘current economic climate’ for so long now that it should probably be renamed ‘the economic climate’, and, for some cities at least, sustainability seems to come with a price tag beyond their budgets and no guarantee of economic growth. [read more]

Toronto's Losing its Vision

January 6, 2012 by Robert Kwolek
with 76 views

Recently browsing through the website of Canadian magazine The Walrus, I cam upon this article entitled How Toronto Lost Its Groove by John Lorinc. It touches on many of the themes I discussed in my Toronto case study, in particular the city's lack of vision towards its future structure and the lack of investment in public transit. Mr.... [read more]

Have Sustainability Projects Stalled In Your City?

November 24, 2011 by Amelia Timbers
with 129 views

A lot of cities have put the breaks on sustainability plans that were established prior to 2007. In Boston, I've also seen projects be suspended, for years on end, as financing dried up. It's difficult to get and keep funds in a recession, and even more difficult for green projects to do so.To me, this is frustrating, because sustainable... [read more]

Do We Hear $100 Billion?

November 3, 2011 by David Levinson
with 80 views

LA Times: California HSR is now more expensive: Bullet train cost estimates to rise: "Bullet train cost estimates rise to $98.5 billion. In a key change, the state has decided to stretch the construction schedule by 13 years, completing the Southern California-to-Bay Area high speed rail in 2033 rather than 2020." And now my estimate... [read more]

Is Urban Life Overrated?

October 29, 2011 by Chuck Wolfe
with 256 views

Rural Africa, ripe for city skills, without cities Microfinance—the practice of personal small loans to spur creativity in developing nations—had well-known rural roots. Of late, I had assumed that the practice had become a city-based endeavor, in concert with other programs, targeting the world’s burgeoning urban populations. Time in... [read more]

The Snowflake Problem: Why Energy Efficiency Projects Are So Damned Hard To Finance

October 19, 2011 by Shari Shapiro
with 170 views

Photo by jbalint1via Flickr

Uniqueness may be good for snowflakes, but lousy for financial transactions. At least part of the problem in harnessing private capital to fund energy efficiency projects is the lack of standardization across projects. Major financial institutions need big pipelines of medium- to large- deals to make the sector worthwhile. [read more]

Greenbuild 2011: Building Metrics Take Center Stage

October 7, 2011 by Chris Cheatham
with 99 views

One of themes of Greenbuild this year was data and metrics. This is not a surprise. As the green building industry continues to mature, owners are demanding better performance. The theme of data and metrics appeared in many forms throughout the Greenbuild sessions. [read more]