Craig Agranoff

A government department gets a budget of $2 million. If it spends $1.7 million and accomplishes everything it was supposed to, you’d think everyone would be thrilled. But in some organizations, managers worry that leaving money unspent will result in a smaller budget next year. Think about that. We can create a system where spending money becomes more important than saving it. The numbers aren’t making that decision. The incentives we’ve attached to them are.

Drone show canceled tonight due to a President Trump no fly zone. Sad for all those businesses that counted on this.

Political campaigns spend enormous amounts trying to influence how people think. But here’s something I find interesting: the same $100 donation can mean completely different things depending on who gives it. For a wealthy donor, it may be insignificant. For someone living paycheck to paycheck, it may represent a genuine sacrifice. Campaign finance reports treat both contributions as $100. The numbers tell us how much money was raised. They don’t necessarily tell us how much the contributors cared.

A city can spend tens of millions constructing a parking garage because it believes there will be demand for those spaces over several decades. But that investment is ultimately based on assumptions about how people will travel, where they’ll work, and what transportation alternatives will exist. If those assumptions change, the economic value of the garage can change too. That’s why I’m interested in designing infrastructure that can adapt to different uses. The building may last 50 years. The behavior that justified it might not.

One of my favorite things in economic development is watching an idea go from ridiculous to obvious. A restaurant opens somewhere everyone said wouldn’t work. Six months later there’s a wait every weekend. Then another restaurant opens nearby. Then somebody renovates the building next door. A few years later everyone explains why the area was “always destined” to become successful. It wasn’t obvious at the beginning. Someone just went first.

Can someone let @elonmusk know that Florida is still ready for him to relocate here!

People talk a lot about building parks. I think where you put the park might matter almost as much as the park itself. If I have to get in my car specifically to visit it, it’s a destination. If I naturally walk through it on my way to dinner, coffee or somewhere else, it becomes part of my life. Same grass. Same benches. Completely different relationship with the neighborhood. Good planning seems to understand the difference.

A hundred years ago, most people couldn’t have imagined routinely paying for groceries by tapping a small electronic device against a machine. Today it’s ordinary. The concept of exchanging value remains, but the methods keep changing. So many of the things we currently consider permanent features of our economy are really just temporary arrangements that future generations will find equally strange.

Real estate markets are remarkably sensitive to reputation. A neighborhood might have beautiful homes, convenient access to employment, and reasonable prices, yet struggle to attract buyers because of how people perceive it. Another neighborhood may command a substantial premium because it has become fashionable. Sometimes those reputations are supported by measurable differences. Sometimes they’re outdated or exaggerated. Either way, perceptions influence real financial decisions. That’s why what people believe about a place deserves attention alongside what the statistics say.

Sometimes I find it remarkable that I can hand someone a piece of paper with Benjamin Franklin’s face on it, and they’ll give me $100 worth of food, merchandise, or services. The paper itself is practically worthless. But the person accepting it knows they can hand it to somebody else tomorrow and receive something in return. An enormous portion of our economy functions because people we’ve never met agree to participate in the same system. That’s a pretty extraordinary level of trust when you think about it.

When a city builds a road, we can estimate how many vehicles it will carry. When it builds a drainage system, we can calculate how much water it can handle. When it builds a public square, we tend to measure construction costs and perhaps attendance at special events. But the real return may include thousands of ordinary interactions, stronger nearby businesses, greater neighborhood desirability, and residents who feel more connected to where they live. Those benefits are harder to quantify, but that doesn’t make them imaginary.

Just because zoning allows you to build something doesn’t mean you should. And just because zoning prohibits something doesn’t mean it would be bad for the community. That’s a distinction I wish came up more often in development discussions. A project can meet every technical requirement and still be poorly conceived. Another project might make perfect sense for a neighborhood but require multiple variances because the zoning code hasn’t kept up with how the area has changed. I’d rather see municipalities spend more time evaluating the actual merits and impacts of a development than automatically assuming the existing regulations always produce the right outcome. Good planning requires judgment, not just a checklist.

Real estate investors talk about following jobs. Maybe we should also talk about following customers. A retailer with sophisticated location analytics is essentially making a prediction that enough of its customers either live nearby, work nearby, visit nearby or soon will. That’s an interesting prediction to watch when your own money is going into the same neighborhood.

Dog owners sometimes start dressing like their dogs without realizing it. Companies do something similar with competitors. One law firm builds a certain website and suddenly every law firm has it. One realtor makes a certain video and six months later everyone is making it. Eventually an entire industry starts looking like the same dog.

Cities spend a lot of money convincing people to come visit. I’ve always wondered what would happen if some of that money went toward giving the people who already live there more reasons to stay out on a Saturday night. Better parks. Better streets. Better public spaces. More interesting downtowns. If residents start spending more of their weekends in their own city, there’s a decent chance visitors will eventually want to as well.

Pittsburgh just did something that I wish more cities would seriously consider. Their City Council unanimously voted to eliminate minimum parking requirements for new developments and loosen certain restrictions on building size. Anyone who has ever tried to develop a commercial property knows how ridiculous some parking requirements can get. You can have a perfectly good piece of property, a project that makes financial sense, and then discover you need so many parking spaces that there’s barely any room left for the actual building. Now, I wouldn’t suggest eliminating parking requirements everywhere. Here in South Florida, we’re still heavily dependent on cars, and parking is already a nightmare in certain areas. But why should a small downtown property have to follow the same parking formulas as a suburban development? We have cities desperate for redevelopment, empty commercial buildings sitting for years, and housing costs that keep climbing. At some point, municipalities need to examine whether their own regulations are contributing to the problem. Pittsburgh isn’t eliminating zoning. They’re recognizing that some of the old rules may be doing more harm than good. I’d love to see more South Florida cities take a serious look at this.

Downtowns are competing with an extraordinary amount of convenience. People can order almost anything online, have food delivered, work remotely, and find entertainment without leaving home. That changes what downtowns need to offer. A collection of stores may no longer be enough to persuade someone to make the trip. The surrounding experience becomes increasingly important: interesting architecture, restaurants, walkable streets, public spaces, and the opportunity to spend time somewhere enjoyable. Cities should be paying attention to what gives people a reason to leave the house.

A city can spend $15 million building a beautiful park and then surround it with roads that are miserable to cross, buildings that turn their backs to it, and nothing interesting within walking distance. Then officials wonder why people only visit during special events. The park might be perfectly designed. The problem is everything around it. I’d like to see cities evaluate public spaces based on how they connect to the surrounding neighborhood, rather than treating each one as an isolated construction project.

Cities eventually look like the decisions they’ve been making. You can actually walk around and see 30 years of priorities. What was protected. What was ignored. What was allowed. What somebody cared enough to make beautiful. A city is basically its decisions made visible.

One of the cheapest economic development tools might be visible momentum. Paint the building. Fix the landscaping. Fill the storefront. Clean the block. Open something unusual. Get construction started. People are remarkably good at noticing when a place appears to be moving forward. Investors notice it too.