Thursday, February 7, 2013

From Project for Public Spaces — Opportunity is Local (Or: You Can’t Buy
A New Economy)

Brendan Crain argues we've got it ass-backwards. I think he's right:

When cities jump into the talent attraction death match arena, they often wind up losing to win: they spend millions of dollars on insane tax incentives to woo corporate headquarters and factories; they drop millions more on fancy amenities that haven’t really been asked for, in the hopes that (since it worked elsewhere) each bauble will magically cause a crowd of American Apparel-wearing, Mac-toting graphic designers to materialize out of thin air; they sell their souls in order to “create” jobs that are, in fact, merely shifted over from somewhere else.

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