Required Reading On Economic Development Policy

Via Atrios, who as usual has the right take.  Focus more on making a city a better place to live and work. Focus on quality of life improvements. There are actually plenty of mega projects that can do that - the Big Dig or new transit lines come to mind. But new stadiums?  Terrible economic development projects by any rational measure. 

But somehow politicians everywhere keep going back to that well.

Shared from the Digg iPhone app:
"It's wrong to take money from taxpayers and hand it to millionaires and billionaires," said Arthur Rolnick, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota who has studied the public cost of professional sports stadiums. "If you try to justify it on economic development, the arguments dissolve pretty fast. The public would be much better off if they invested in things that would improve the quality of life, like roads and bridges, education and lowering crime." $9.7 Billion Building or renovating the 30 Major League Baseball parks cost taxpayers a total of $9.7 billion as of 2010, including construction, land acquisition, infrastructure, foregone taxes and other factors, according to Judith Grant Long, a professor of urban planning at Harvard University and author of the 2012 book "Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities." According to Long's data, that ranged from $681 million at Miller Park in Milwaukee, completed in 2001, to $33 million at Angel Stadium of Anaheim, where a 1996 renovation was mostly privately financed.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/rebirth-eludes-baltimore-as-camden-reality-lags-promises.html