www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/flushable-wipes-clogging-sewers/2021/04/23/5e8bbc82-a2c9-11eb-a774-7b47ceb36ee8_story.html Flushable wipes are not really flushable. So don’t. Actually a stunningly common problem across the world is dumping in streams and water ways (closed and open). Makes for an incredibly difficult management problem and, yet another, example of a commons problem.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/slow-pace-pandemic-parenting-life/2021/04/05/70808f54-917f-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html
www.washingtonpost.com/health/cement-concrete-climate-change-emissions/2021/02/26/8afec166-7154-11eb-b8a9-b9467510f0fe_story.html A short posting today on advances in concrete technology that hold the promise for reducing the carbon footprint of cement and hence almost every construction project.
Bottom Line Up Front: Development Professionals (myself included!) need to reconsider the role of arts and creative clusters in development. I have spent a good portion of my professional career in international economic development and much of what I have observed is a tendency for sector specialists to stay close to their domain. Engineers (yours […]
Bottom Line Up Front: Art and culture have an important role in economic development. I believe that we can, and we must, learn from across contexts and disciplines. Consider a recent evaluation produced by the Kresge Foundation on the Findings from a Multi-Year Evaluation of the National Fresh, Local, and Equitable (FreshLo) Initiative. This is […]
Here is an interesting blogging site from Abt on Political Economy Analysis and Adaptive Management – two things I strongly encourage! My experience is that infrastructure related reforms often underperform – in part from a lack of political assessment upfront (public sector unions anyone?) which leads to policy reform activities that are the poor step-children […]
An interesting article from Slate (Turn On the Water) that compares Detroit and Johannesburg’s shut off policies for non-payment. Of course the comparison of the a major US metropolitan area to a counterpart in sub-Saharan Africa is doubtless intentional – if jarring. The side by side analysis raises two key issues: what is fair and […]
An interesting and thought provoking article in the New York Times recently on The Pandemic is a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. In the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma two players are playing: if both refuse to turn on the other player they share the reward, if one turns on the other one will reap the entire reward while […]
Many years ago I discovered the International Institute for Public Participation’s spectrum and was taken by its clarity of articulation of roles and responsibilities around public participation. This week I ran across a similar piece from ODI on stakeholder engagement in an adaptive management framework. Both of these are worth a read. A key question […]
Pre-COVID I used to ride my bike to work – back when I actually went to the office. While the situation has improved dramatically over the past 10-15 years, it was (and is) still an incredibly risky enterprise. This article from the NYT fits a pattern of increasing efforts to reclaim street space and to […]