Financial Destruction in Detroit
On Friday, Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the city challenging the legitimacy of interest-rate swap contracts which were costing the city tens of millions […]
Take Note: Berlin Thrives with a Declining Population and Housing Surplus
A few months ago I wrote a piece for Shelterforce and a related piece for Rooflines on Mumbai. There I argued that our ideas and practices about housing and community […]
In India, Large-scale Housing Solutions Don’t Work
In the latest issue of Shelterforce, I proposed that community development practitioners in the U.S. could learn from Dharavi, one of the largest slums in Mumbai in my article, “What […]
Detroit: Exception or Rule?
The bankruptcy of Detroit (the legal filing is currently on hold) has prompted a sudden flood of interest in the city. Pundits have breezily explained the event by blaming public […]
What Mumbai’s Slums Do Right, And Why We Should Emulate Them
Sometimes to understand our own cities and community development practices it is helpful to understand a radically different setting. In the slums of Mumbai one thing is immediately evident: the […]
ESOP Rises Again
The success of a Cleveland-based community organizing group in the face of massive foreclosures suggests that the city (and the nation) should have held on to a more diverse set of community organizations.
CDCs Must Recognize Changing Conditions
It was announced this week that new home sales dropped 15 percent in December. This follows a year of similar news. Earlier in the week everyone was pleasantly surprised by […]
Running on Empty
For decades, community developers have relied on the power of markets to bring neighborhoods back, but they can’t build their way out of the foreclosure mess.