Read more
American cities, once economic and social launch pads for their residents, are all too often plagued by poverty and decay. One need only to look at the ruins of Detroit to see how far some once-great cities have fallen, or at Boston and San Francisco for evidence that such decline is reversible. In
Boom Towns, Stephen J.K. Walters diagnoses the root causes of urban decline in order to prescribe remedies that will enable cities to thrive once again.
Arguing that commonplace explanations for urban decay misunderstand the nature of our towns, Walters reconceives of cities as dense accumulations of capital in all of its forms-places that attract people by making their labor more productive and their leisure more pleasurable. Policymakers, therefore, must properly define and enforce property rights in order to prevent the flight of capital and the resulting demise of urban centers. Using vivid evocations of iconic towns and the people who crucially affected their destinies, Walters shows how public policy measures which aim to revitalize often do more harm than good. He then outlines a more promising set of policies to remedy the capital shortage that continues to afflict many cities and needlessly limit their residents' opportunities. With its fresh interpretation of one of the American quandaries of our day,
Boom Towns offers a novel contribution to the debate about American cities and a program for their restoration.
List of contents
1. What We've Lost - and Why
2. Fleeing Robin Hood
3. A One Percent Solution
4. The Conquest of Capital
5. A Better Climate
6. Things Fall Apart
7. Three Simple Rules
8. No Little Plans
9. Control Freaks
10. Reclaiming the Commons
11. Boom Commandments
About the author
Stephen J.K. Walters is Professor of Economics at Loyola University Maryland and a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise. He has advised aspiring and elected mayors and governors, given expert testimony in antitrust and tort cases, and consulted for diverse clients, ranging from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to major league baseball clubs.
Summary
Boom Towns presents a bold analysis of the decline of American cities and a guide to restoring their vitality. Stephen J.K. Walters argues that urban leaders must enforce property rights in order to prevent the loss of vital capital - physical, human, and social - that helps cities and their residents to flourish.
Additional text
"Boom Towns is an innovative contribution to the debate about cities. The idea that we should be looking at urban policy from the perspective of capital formation is both a breath of fresh air and a critically important insight that should have broad impact."
