Please feel free to view my Capstone: Bridging the Transportation Finance Gap: Planning Beyond Boundaries for a Connected 21st Century Please also feel free to view my Senior Honors Thesis: (Re)New Your City, New York City: Transporting Transformation Hubs New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is constantly running trains, but it is also constantly running […]
Archive | Economics & Statistics RSS feed for this archive
Ameraissance of Transportation Finance
“New York never stops. From morning-rush commuters to late-night club-goers, from school children on subways to seniors on buses, millions of people rely on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to get them through their daily lives. Without a robust and well-maintained network of railroads, subways, bus routes, bridges, and tunnels, New York as we […]
Downtown Brooklyn Chain Store Surge
DNA Info recently reported that there is a chain store “surge” going on in Downtown Brooklyn. Based on a 2013 report by Center for an Urban Future, national chain stores such as H&M, TJ Maxx, Nordstrom Rack, and Sephora are making beachheads in places such as the Fulton Mall. Overall, Brooklyn saw the […]
Brooklyn’s 1938 “Redline” Map
During the middle of the 20th-century, America’s urban cores were being gutted through fiscal attrition: tax dollars were being sent, for the first time, out and away from cities to subsidize suburban expansion. At the same time, private financial institutions were pulling their funding away from urban home-buyers, business owners and those wishing to refinance […]
A fence dividing a city’s poorest from richest
By Alyssa Campbell When driving along Montreal’s Boulevard de l’Acadie, you might at first only notice on one side of the road a line of shrubs with suburban houses in the background. However, upon closer inspection, the existence of a six-foot tall chain-link fence separating Montreal’s poorest neighborhood from one of its richest becomes readily apparent. […]
Gentrification in the Plateau, Montreal’s most famous neighborhood
By Alyssa Campbell The Plateau-Mont-Royal is arguably Montreal’s most famous neighborhood. Ranked by many publications as one of North America’s “best neighborhoods,” the Plateau has built a reputation for being a hip area with trendy bars, shopping, restaurants and cafes. Yet four decades ago life in the neighborhood was quite the opposite, on the precipice of […]
Cities lose big in Obama’s 2015 US Budget
Looming medical costs, a retiring workforce, defense department spending, and immigration reform were some of the major discussion points of the 2015 U.S. Government Budget, released on March 4th. With what’s been touted as alarming deficit spending, the Obama Administration and Congress chose to make large cuts to domestic environmental and science programs, as well […]
Eminent domain, not always evil?
Eminent domain is one of those government powers that has gotten some bad press in recent years, mainly due it being used for economic development. But eminent domain doesn’t have to be all bad. Ellen Brown wrote a compelling piece on using ED as a tool to help reclaim foreclosed properties whose ownership is lost […]
The Other Brownsville
When I searched the New York Times website recently for “Brownsville” (the one in Brooklyn, not the one in Texas), the first few search results were as follows: 16-Year-Old Is Fatally Shot on His Way Home from a Party in Brownsville New York City’s Optimistic Tone Feels Out of Reach in Brownsville Brownsville, Brooklyn, Is […]
What’s the cap rate, buddy? How to get development your community actually wants
A brief summary/disclaimer: All too often, terms like gentrification and displacement are tossed around, community residents are treated as passive actors, and the ensuing conflict between market-rate developers and affordable housing non-profits plays out in the media, like a spinning, frustrating wheel with no clear concessions or answers. At the end of the day, market-rate […]
