We need working cities to be competitive in ths world

Implications: Every city has this problem. The public sector has little capability to meet the needs for streets, sewers, water systems, power grids and the other backbone items required to open for business every day. What’s fundable is patchwork and it appears we’re patching the patches too often now.

Analysis: As the article represents, it’s up to the private institutions of our society to plan and fund within the framework of the greater public health, safety and welfare. I include the development community in the definition of private institutions. The nature of the real estate funding process has made the ability to develop massive projects the key to meeting the needs of modern society. We’re now recapitalizing our financial institutions after the sub prime losses and we’ll soon be adding capital when the losses from commercial real estate speculation show up. We’ll need to target our investment goals more clearly in the future so that we can have even, profitable development results and working cites. The goal will be to have the necessary infrastructure in place on an as needed basis when buildings start. We’re not doing the process well now and we’ll need to improve to be world class competitive.