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American cities have experienced a remarkable surge in convention
center development over the last two decades, with exhibit hall
space growing from 40 million square feet in 1990 to 70 million in
2011—an increase of almost 75 percent. Proponents of these
projects promised new jobs, new private development, and new tax
revenues. Yet even as cities from Boston and Orlando to Phoenix and
Seattle have invested in more convention center space, the return
on that investment has proven limited and elusive. Why, then, do
cities keep building them? Written by one of the nation's foremost
urban development experts, Convention Center Follies exposes the
forces behind convention center development and the revolution in
local government finance that has privileged convention centers
over alternative public investments. Through wide-ranging examples
from cities across the country as well as in-depth case studies of
Chicago, Atlanta, and St. Louis, Heywood T. Sanders examines the
genesis of center projects, the dealmaking, and the circular logic
of convention center development. Using a robust set of archival
resources—including internal minutes of business consultants and
the personal papers of big city mayors—Sanders offers a
systematic analysis of the consultant forecasts and promises that
have sustained center development and the ways those forecasts have
been manipulated and proven false. This record reveals that
business leaders sought not community-wide economic benefit or
growth but, rather, to reshape land values and development
opportunities in the downtown core. A probing look at a so-called
economic panacea, Convention Center Follies dissects the inner
workings of America's convention center boom and provides valuable
lessons in urban government, local business growth, and civic
redevelopment.
The major cities of Texas have developed through a complex web of
politics, society, and economics. To describe and explain the
state's urban evolution, the contributors to "Urban Texas" use
comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives that explore the
relationships among interest groups and voting; religion, reform,
gender, and race; civic clubs and suburbs; infrastructure and land
development.
Texas' cities have experienced boom and expansion, bust and
depression. They have also been marked by inequity and
disadvantage. Today's cities face not only the limits of a period
of economic downturn, but also the inheritance of a history of bias
and public-sector inactivity. The story of such forces, challenges
the myths that surround Texas' explosive growth and probes the
staggering costs that growth has entailed.
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