We both live in Kansas City proper, and so while some of our conversation is specific to The City of Fountains, much of it will be familiar to anyone who deals with cities of any size. Ultimately, we all want our cities to grow and our people to flourish. But how?
In one exchange, I get to offer my view on economic development subsidies. “We have turned zero problems into two problems. We have both made it too expensive to develop here. That’s the first problem. And then to solve that problem, we have created a system where we transfer needed tax revenue to developers… we need to go back to that first problem, get all that stuff out of the way. and then we’ll be back to zero problems.”
For more about Kevin’s view, I recommend you visit his substack, and especially his founding column, “What is a ‘Messy’ City?“
