How to Create an Economic Powerhouse of a City

The greatest, most powerful cities in the world run on money. The transfer of money between services. Looking at the cities that have successfully weathered wars, financial crises, and viral outbreaks have some major aspects in common. The most important aspect from my hypothesis perspective is the transit system of trains. I will take a healthy look at the designated top-five, according to a average of polls to see how my theory holds water.

New York, Tokyo, London, Paris and Los Angeles. I have never been to Tokyo, but I've been to all the other cities and used their subway/transit system. I can imagine Tokyo is probably the best. Not just the functionality of passenger use, cleanliness, and social etiquette but in technical dominance. My argument is not that if you have a subway system you will become a great economic city. Just that the most grossing economic power hubs have high functioning subway/transit systems. To me the opportunity creates the ability to fulfill the goal. Great transit allows a city to succeed where others may falter.

In all countries, the strongest economic hubs have a well-designated transit network. New York is a total wreck compared to all the others. Water leaking through the beams, constant delays, poorly marked exits. Limited ADA access for people with suitcases or wheelchairs. There are no real vendors in the station, and cleanliness is low. But damned if it doesn't get you from point A to point B conveniently. The lines are efficient and connections are useful. Then there are the equally effective and cleaner commuter trains that day trip the burbanites to city lights. It is one thing to connect the boroughs but this connects the suburbs a.k.a. the higher earner demographic.

The London tub, as they call it, is great. The upkeep is better than the US and they have more central hubs that connect the other major cities to London, such as the Midland. You can get on almost anywhere in the city to get where you're going. Most cities, at least those not on a coast, will have a loop encompassing the criss-crossing vein of networks, connecting the innards of the urban environment. You can find coffee and pastries at many of the stations along with actual grocery stores, so commuting doesn't leave you peckish and errands can be accomplished in one swoop. From this city you can actually catch a fast train to the next city I am exploring.

Paris is a huge city, with a huge network of mixed transit classes. Huge as in you can land at one airport on one side of the city and leave from the airport on the other side of the city and not realize you have to catch a train to get you there. Even as someone who doesn't speak French, utilizing the transit system to navigate is convenient and easy. Like the majority of European cities, it includes a healthy mix of local and regional options. The city has a slew of tours that for the million of tourist that visit every year but there are more sites to enjoy that lie outside the urban center. Paris is not really my city but their mix of transit options place them high on the list of economic powerhouse cities for those who live there and those who visit.

So what makes Paris and other urban cities such economic powerhouses? The Olympics can be held there and visitors don't have to worry about how they are going to get to the next event, cause there will always be a transit option. Employees utilize the full resources a city offers and they don't have to worry about how they are going to get there, because there will always be a transport option nearby. Economies are supported by services, and transit can exchange plenty of funds for services without the side effects caused by getting behind a wheel. Kids get to and from school without their parents' assistance, becoming more self-sufficient and independent contributors to society because they know what it means to understand navigating a city.

Last on some of the lists was Los Angeles, but thats bologna they do not have an extensive train transit network. It has expanded since I lived there, and it was sufficient enough to allow me the amenity of giving up my car while living there, but it is not big city marvel. Truth can be said that it got me to some places I wanted to go, but it wasn't expansive and ease of travel was limited. That is why I am going to talk about Berlin instead, by far the top three most successful cities in the world with a history more expansive than Babylon. Civilizations have fought two world wars over the value that is Berlin. At the beginning of the century it had more Nobel Prize winners residing in a perimeter than any other city.

Berlin has been built and rebuilt over centuries, which means the it has had the opportunity to improve and innovate. It is the largest city in Europe by surface space and serves over 3.6 million residents. I was lucky enough to be one of those million for 12 of the most beautiful years of my life. When I left they just extended the U5 all the way to Hauptbahnhof, which was just built the first time I visited Berlin in 2006. If you visit the city there are subtleties that will tell you where you are. As a remnant of the east you will still see the use of street cars as transit, but if you are in the west no street cars just U-Bahn, S-Bahn and bus. Allee the east, Strasse the west. It is a marvel divided by an invisible wall.

There are streets referred to as the bicycle freeway. Kreuzberg has become the silicon valley of Germany, Tiergarten hosts some of the largest festivals that bring crowds from all over, omitting New Years Eve, which is insane. Any hour of any day there is a way to get from whatever knock-only bar you discovered back to your front door. Berlin to Prague a few hours, Berlin to Amsterdam five hours, Berlin to Paris eight hours. Trade, Politics, Commerce, Services and Arts it is a city made to thrive. And the transit system has been made to meet that challenge, even being nominated as a World Heritage Site. It fuels generations, wether you are the new money bitcoin billionaire, the old Habsburgs related royalty, the punk squatter with your family of hounds, the Sunday 3 am raver or the Kit-Kat adventurist, this cities transit system will support you where ever you go.

Now that I have run down my experiences with the international transit systems that I personally know from a list developed by data and statistics, let me try elaborate how important having a strong subway/transit network is to the economy of a city. That is if the cities goal is to create a resilient competitive business market. The basic and simple thing to understand is it connects people to their jobs in a manner that doesn't require a financial burden one the user. Transit is affordable and doesn't require the purchase of insurance. Safety is also a huge bonus to having a populous utilize mass transit. Less entitled drivers on the road means less loss of life and less accidents that can cause delays to the goods service. Then there is time, commuting doesn't have to be triggering, commuting by transit means less time spent in traffic and reliable to and from creating better labor statistics. More people getting to appointments on time means less of a loss of revenue to industries across the board. Not to mention, generally speaking, wasted time.

So this is my Story about transit and the failing of Denver for not only failing in their current market but being utterly clueless and ignorant about future development. Strive; in this case it is the city that needs to drive to innovate from an outdated transportation model to one that will meet the economic needs of the 22nd century not the 18th.

Overcome; it is not an easy task to overcome decades of bad habits and budgetary malfeasance in the state house. Hard to admit errors people in power will die on a hill of ants if they think that is how they draw honey. Overturning bad policy is unlikely until a city and its people have the guts to hold their leaders accountable. Hate to say it but idiot decisions by idiot state reps account for a lot of bad decision making.

Truth; is a hard truth. Yours and my representatives are not working in our best interest. Parties are people who need to take more accountability for their spending. How to overcome the spending errors of past generation is no easy feat. The truth is some may not be overcome. However, compounding the bad decisions is a hard stop point where reflection and redirection need to take precedence. Reflection really should have been done at the beginning of any new or extension project. What are the success stories of midsize big cities around Europe or Asia, and how did they achieve that success? But since that wasn't done an entire reconciliation of Denver transportation system needs to be conducted. LA made the mistake of not completing the purple line because the obscenely wealthy didn't like the idea of a line going through Brentwood. Instead they spent millions more to divert the tracks and make its less convenient for beach to downtown commuters.

Yield; it's not what's happening. A city budgeting and innovation office should be doing assessments not just on the numbers but on the social benefits before scaling. Kenworthy's Ten Principles of Design all include the social aspect of a city's development. If we are just executing a project as a means to show constituents that work is being done that is the wrong approach. Make sure the data supports a scalable project.

Fast tracks expansion Denver project focuses on connecting the suburbs to the city center and this has left all the people who actually want to live a city life at the mercy of micro-transportation and rip off meta firms like Uber and Lyft. Which has an exceedingly bad reputation for assault on females by male drivers. The government is too scared to touch the city itself because it may cause too much change, but when the people year after year, election after election keep screaming about wanting change. Maybe you should start heading the call.

Denver is all suburb regional-based transportation network instead of inner-city-based system. This is not how you build a powerhouse of a city and why the ridership is mediocre. People move to urban areas for the urban amenities. One of those is not having a car. People move to the suburbs because they want an excuse not to get rid of their cars. Denver transit does nothing to increase the value of urban space, my opionion is that it is failing urban constituents. They need to start thinking about stoping the funding of the street car inner loop, and start allocating funds to real economic improvement. The city needs to survive to create an urban economy more than weekend tourist tax break.

What do you think about your transit network? How important do you think this form of infrastructure is to creating a strong resilient economy? Do you use transit or are you intimidated by it? What is a story of the best transit system you have ever experienced? How important to the social good can a healthy transit system be to an innovative community? Or will we all be working from home and have robots do the heavy lifting?