Balanced Growth: Expansion vs. Retraction

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by Gordon Smith
on Thursday, January 28, 2010

This post is ripped directly from Asheville, NC 2010: A Financial Crossroads, a report prepared by Asheville City Staff to put our current economic position in perspective. I'll be featuring excerpts from the report from time to time. Click here to read all eleven pages.

In his book, Cities Without Suburbs, David Rusk used census data from 1950 to 2000 to analyze cities' fiscal health in the context of demographics, growth patterns and economic bases. Rusk employed a measure of the degree to which a city either 'captured' population growth or 'contributed' through population loss in a regional area and compared that data to indicators of the cities' fiscal health (namely bond ratings). Rusk called cities that captured a greater proportion of the population as 'elastic' while cities that lost a greater proportion of the population were called 'inelastic.' Practical means of providing services is ineffective and unsustainable. In short, municipal growth should be balanced and should seek to include that which is truly urbanized.

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Content Source: scrutinyhooligans.us/2010/01/23/balanced-growth-expansion-vs-retraction/

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About the Author - Gordon Smith

Contact Gordon Smith:
Looking Glass Center for Counseling and Psychiatry
gordonsmithasheville@yahoo.com
www.gordonforasheville.com

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