In the introduction of the book Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, Altshuler gives an overview of how American government works. The unique relationship between cities and higher-level government creates a system that allows private investment opportunities. The higher-level government was encouraging local governments to find ways to develop their cities. Therefore, Local governments are constantly working hard to make themselves a more attractive candidate for become a partner with private investors.
A lot of mega-projects were taken place in part of city where occupied by poor people. Those mega-projects usually have a large influence on people as well as the whole city. However, it became harder to build a mega-project today because now there are many government programs that protect these poor. Another reason that explains why there are less mega-projects today is that many criticized that mega-projects destroyed homes of poor people.
Altshhuler mentioned three mega-projects types, which are highways, airports, and rail transit systems. These are the three major projects around the time, which cost a lot of money to build but hard to get any profits from them. I think that it is not a good idea to have public mega-project because when government needs funds for their public projects, one way of raising money is to increase the tax, but they weren’t making anything back.
One interesting point that Altshuler made in his introduction is that “political scientists concerned with urban politics have recently been preoccupied with business influence and economic development policy.” I agree with him that tax money and federal funds were definitely not enough for a city to grow, and to implement its entire project. Therefore local governments were “marketing” themselves, and try to make themselves to be more attractive to the private investor, so that private sectors will help to start projects that will benefits both the city and the private investors.
I think that when government and private investors work together, we will solve the problem with funding. Those private investors will make the funding possible; however, they may slow down the process and may reduce the government’s power in decision-making. This is what Altshuler mentioned in his book, in which our cities were highly depended on private sectors for decision-making. If the local politicians only focused on how to attract investors, not seek help from higher-level government, then I feel like our central government had lost part of its purpose.
