7 Days, 7 Topics: A Round-Up of Topics from this Past Week

Florence's new brand.

To say it was a busy week would be something of an understatement. The Crimean and general Ukrainian situation escalated. The hunt for an airplane lost in a Bermuda Triangle-style continued in the south Indian Ocean. Duke lost to Mercer. Not exactly light stuff for anybody, unless you're a Mercer fan. Anyway, this whole volley of events prompted a number of articles and opinions worth bringing forward and discussing in the context of public administration. Below are seven articles from this past worth passing around and discussing:

1. Sunday: Too Soon for Answers in Harlem (by Nicole Gelinas for City Journal): An overview of things that could have caused this month's explosion in Harlem, which killed eight people, injured several more and leveled a few buildings. Gelinas points out that it may not have been Con Edison's (the transmission utility) fault due to any number of other problems. Fair enough, but her argument is then expanded to say that the failure of a gas main cannot be compared to the general infrastructure problem facing America as Con Ed is a private utility with underground infrastructure. That argument misses the fact that private regulated utilities function almost identically to public utilities (indeed, under an enterprise fund, it's not as if funding can legally be diverted from water mains to teacher salaries as Gelinas mentions) and the 127-year-old cast iron main located near the explosion is far beyond its service life. America has a real infrastructure problem regardless of who is tasked with maintaining any given piece of infrastructure and casting doubts on it does no one any favors.

2. Monday: Determining the Markup on Municipal Bonds (by the New York Times' Carl Richards): A brief overview of a side of the market we (at least I) rarely think about - those folks who are buying municipal bonds and the power of brokers in those sales. If you've got a few in your portfolio, it may also save you future problems with markups.

3. Tuesday: Walmart Goes Urban and Smaller in Washington DC (by Edward McMahon for Urban Land Magazine): Walmart's finally found its way into major cities - in this case, Washington DC - and its taking on the look of the landscape by compressing its space and adopting urban facades. It's an interesting change of heart for the retail giant, but really, it also proves the adage "Necessity is the mother of invention." Strong demand for lower cost merchandise coupled with high population density probably softened Walmart's strategy in approaching the question of its urban locations with favorable results for those communities. Sadly, I don't expect to see this in the suburbs.

4. Wednesday: How the Crimean Conflict Could Impact Your Finances (by Richard Barrington for Forbes): Russia's invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea is the kind of event which foreign policy experts could write a new War & Peace about, but aside from some general basic humanitarian concerns, there is little other immediate impact at the local level - unless you think about how global trade issues trickle down. Barrington illustrates the possible impacts of this whole situation on your wallet simply and efficiently. Of course, tax revenue is yet another step removed from the level Barrington is at, but the correlation between general economic conditions (and, in particular, individual consumer sentiment on the economy) and tax revenue is clear and obvious. If this situation simmers at its current level or escalates, we may begin seeing the consequences anywhere from three months to a year down the road in tax receipts.

5. Thursday: The Great Debate: City Manager vs. Assistant City Manager (by Julie Underwood, writing on the ELGL Website): A nice overview for emerging professionals on the merits of both seeking the City Manager role and the benefits of being a career Assistant or Department Head. This was not something they openly discussed in my grad school (though subject specialist adjunct professors would sometimes touch upon it), but the longer I've been a professional, the more I recognize the merit of staying an Assistant. Grad students and recent new professionals should definitely give this food for thought a read.

6. Friday: What is CNN Going To Do If We Never Find This Plane? (by Esquire's Ben Collins): An absolute great look at how the media's need for ratings (and sales by extension) promotes sensationalized news without substance. What's that got to do with us in public administration? Well, first and foremost, it creates problems with our relationship with the media. Investigative or sensational coverage is nothing new, but as it grows, it'll make those reporters we were once comfortable with become our enemies and that defeats the whole purpose of media relations. Second, it creates problems with the public. While the traditional media is not the mainstay it once was, it still holds more sway than most of our public information efforts, and negative coverage hurts both the public's generalized view of government and their specific view of our individual organizations. This is something we should be concerned about and asking ourselves what are we going to do in light of the fact that the media may give us prolonged negative attention that we are not necessarily prepared to manage.

7. Saturday: Florence's New Logo: Crowdsourced Design That's Bad for Design (by Steven Heller for The Atlantic Cities): City branding has been hot recently - it seems like everybody is jumping into it. In this case, Florence opted for a riskier albeit cheaper route to creating a brand: crowdsourcing it. Heller argues that the ultimate logo Florence chose is unsatisfactory and partially because the crowdsourcing option cheapens the whole process. I'm not in love with the logo myself, and I agree that crowdsourcing feels like a weak alternative to the careful study and thought being placed on the community, its unique attributes and its dynamics that a designer can bring.

Thoughts? Any other good stories I missed? Share them below.