More about the Buildings Going Up in Philly

Today I picked up the Temple Times, and read about this cool blog about building in Philadelphia.

And, the Philly Blog also rocks.

Where should I go for Spring Break

Recently, I've been inundated with stress. And as a consequence, have been thinking a great deal about vacations. Specifically, my (hopefully) last Spring Break next year. Classes will be out March 6 through 10 2006, So I could leave the 3rd.

But where should I go?

I might point out that I've never gone on one of the classic "debachery" style spring breaks, both out of a sense of decorum and because of a lack of funds (of course, since many of my years of schooling were while I was also working full-time, taking a weeks vacation usually seemed out of the question.)

Still, if I were going to go for a full-out spring break experience, doing my best to look like partiers 10 years my junior, where should I go? (Does Abercrombie still supply the standard ensemble for bright-eyed middle class college kids wanting to emulate porn stars?)

Of course, another alternative would be to go somewhere more adult. Europe would beckon under that scenario. First, many of the countries already have large english speaking service infrastructures in place. And second, I have retained some portion of my repeated attempts at German. And, since I've been studying the EU for years, it might be nice to see some of the places where everything actually happens.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Brussels.

The worry would be with the cold weather. Early March is probably quite cool in Mitteleuropa. So, what about Monaco? According to this page, the weather is quite reasonable, if not exactly tropical hot, in March.

Making Philadelphia Better

Let us suppose that you wanted to make the City of Philadelphia better.

I have an idea how to do it, which I frequently ruminate upon as I walk through the city.

The big idea is this: the fundamental resource of a city are people. Thus, the best way to improve Philadelphia is to create incentives for people to move to Philadelphia.

I believe that people are more important than any other available resource as to the development of a great city, but I must concede that here I cannot prove it. I assert its truth, and for now will ignore the possibility that it is wrong.

Let me also make another assertion. Right now, there are two catagories of jobs. There are jobs that are location dependant, and there are jobs that are not. Examples of jobs that are location dependant include construction, face-to-face service industries, agriculture, some transportation, retail, medicine, and protective government services. Jobs that are not location dependant include financial services, mail-order, and a wide variety of back-office functions.

Location dependant jobs will become more plentiful as the number and variety of inhabitants in a locale increase. If more people move to Philadelphia, there will be more location dependant jobs that can only be done in Philadelphia. This has the potential to start a virtuous cycle: more population leads to a larger local market in location dependant jobs. A strong demand for local labor will increase put upward pressure on wages, which will further signal to the providers of labor (i.e. individuals) to move to Philadelphia to sell there labor at higher rates.

The problem, of course, is that this could lead to inflation, and could strain public resources.

To attack the problem of local inflation, one must look at its sources, and here I believe the single biggest source of inflation, and the single biggest cost that wage-earners in Philadelphia worry about is housing. But this is a fixable problem, and it leads to my single biggest concrete suggestion.

Government should take aggressive steps to increase the population density of Philadelphia, particularly through reducing taxes and lifting zoning regulations that burden the creation of housing. The highest density housing, i.e. apartment buildings and condominiums, should be the favored creatures of the law. New buildings, as high and as dense as is practical, should be promoted. Particularly when their location would allow easy access to the legacy mass transportation network.

As supplies of housing increase, the fraction of wage-earner income devoted to housing should drop. This frees up more income to support savings, increased consumption (leading to increased employment), and the redevelopment of old or uneconomical housing stock. In turn, this will send important pricing signals to the real estate market, helping developers to recognize the highest and best uses of land.

Low living expenses and a healthy demand for service industry positions provides a key component in the development of entertainment and artistic communities. Artists need inexpensive living, as their work (at least generally in their early stages of their career) tends not to be well compensated. At the same time, artists and entertainers tend to form important communities of mutual aid, criticism, and exchange of ideas. But all of this requires that artists can find day jobs to support their art (again, at least in their early careers.)

Low living expenses and a strong demand for labor provide perfect incubator conditions for new enterprises and entreprenuerial activity. Even risk-takers weigh risks. If the personal financial consequences of a bold but risky entreprenurial idea are softened by the knowlege that the local market will always have a job for you (and you won't lose your house or apartment) then it's easier to take the risk.

Finally, for jobs that could theoretically be done anywhere (the non-location dependant jobs) Phildelphia would have a better chance of competing for them if the city became known for low living expenses and a boldly entreprenurial local culture.

My Intuitive Speculation is True

Fundraising by pretty women more effective.

(H/T Instapundit)

Now what do I do?

Great minds think alike.

Unfortunately for my paper-writing, I discovered today a wonderful journal article on exactly the points I wanted to cover in my paper. Three days before I need to have my initial drafts of some preliminary sections done.

Go to here and you can read Tobias H. Tröger's excellent, well-reasoned, well-documented paper that says almost everything that I wanted to say in my paper I'm writing, including my theories as to how big a deal the Daily Mail-Centros-Uberseering-Inspire Art Ltd. line of cases will be to the creation of a market for reincorporations in the European Union. (Quick answer: Not as big a deal as it seemed after Centros.)

I can recover by focusing more on Denmark (which should be do-able, as Tröger focuses more on Germany more than I planned to). Still, this is quite annoying to me.

I hadn't caught it because it's a foreign journal, and so my primary Lexis searches (focused on US Journals) didn't "see" it. But I hit it when I was doing a foreign periodical search trolling for economic data (my intent was to nail down how many pseudo-foreign corporations were formed in Denmark each year.)

The End of Summer

It's going to get cooler in the next few days, with a 10 degree drop coming in the next 48 hours.

The trees here in Philly are only just now starting to show color (many of them appear to have lost leaves from stress rather than from the change in seasons--I suspect that it's because early fall was unusually warm and dry.)

I've spent the night looking up Danish economic statistics, and job hunting. The latter is never fun, except for the part where you sit back and go, "Oh yeah, I could do that." For instance, I found a few scattered references to the hiring practices of Advance Publications, the owners of Conde' Nast, the magazine publishers. I'd love to grow up and be a lawyer for GQ. And it would improve my chances of dating models.