Day: 2013-11-22

World-class sports cities

| David Levinson

While sports must be important for economic development, we think too small in this Twin Cities region.

World class sports city host more than one team in a league. London has countless Football clubs (Premier League clubs include: Chelsea, Fulham, Arsenal, Tottenham, West Ham, Crystal Palace). Evan smaller cities like Manchester and Liverpool have United and City versions.

Back in the States, the NBA shares markets: Los Angeles hosts the San Diego Clippers and Minnesota Lakers, New York has the Knicks and the Knets.

Similarly Major League Baseball gives us Yankees and the Mets, Chicago has the Cubs and White Sox, the Bay Area has the New York Giants and Philadelphia A’s. In baseball, the American and National Leagues long competed over cities, although many teams have since moved (the Boston Braves, the St. Louis Browns, the Philadelphia Athletics, and New York City’s Giants and Dodgers come immediately to mind.)

In the NFL New York/New Jersey has the Jets and the Giants, and once world-class Los Angeles had the Raiders and Rams, and Chicago had the Cardinals and the Bears,

To meet this standard, Greater MSP needs a team to complement and compete with the Vikings, having merely one team halves our chances for a Super Bowl title, halves the number of Super Bowls we could host, halves the number of times Minnesota appears on Monday Night Football, and so on.

Fortunately, we have multiple football stadia, so can easily temporarily accommodate the second team for 8 games a year in either the new stadium or the much older more mature TCF bank stadium while a new Domed stadium is built to accommodate the expansion franchise (or perhaps a team will relocate from a market half our size). We have two core cities, we should have two teams in each professional league, starting with the NFL, since it is the most popular. A new team in the AFC would be ideal.

Just like the Packers and Steelers are named after a local industry, the new football team should be as well. I suggest the Minnesota Implanters, for our vibrant bio-medical devices sector.

Imagine it’s 2025, and a Superbowl, played in February at the new domed stadium, between the NFC Vikings and AFC Implanters. (We know the Implanters would win.) Fortune 500 companies would relocate to the city just to enjoy the party. If one team is good, two teams are better.

The Transportation Experience: Second Edition

| David Levinson
The Transportation Experience: Second Edition by William L. Garrison and David M. Levinson
The Transportation Experience: Second Edition by William L. Garrison and David M. Levinson

Garrison, W.L. and Levinson, D.M. (2014) The Transportation Experience: Policy, Planning, and Deployment – Second Edition. Oxford University Press

Publication Date: February 3, 2014 | ISBN-10: 0199862710 | ISBN-13: 978-0199862719 | Edition: 2

The Transportation Experience explores the historical evolution of transportation modes and technologies. The book traces how systems are innovated, planned and adapted, deployed and expanded, and reach maturity, where they may either be maintained in a polished obsolesce often propped up by subsidies, be displaced by competitors, or be reorganized and renewed. An array of examples supports the idea that modern policies are built from past experiences.

William Garrison and David Levinson assert that the planning (and control) of nonlinear, unstable processes is today’s central transportation problem, and that this is universal and true of all modes. Modes are similar, in that they all have a triad structure of network, vehicles, and operations; but this framework counters conventional wisdom. Most think of each mode as having a unique history and status, and each is regarded as the private playground of experts and agencies holding unique knowledge, operating in isolated silos. However, this book argues that while modes have an appearance of uniqueness, the same patterns repeat: systems policies, structures, and behaviors are a generic design on varying modal cloth. In the end, the illusion of uniqueness proves to be myopic.

While it is true that knowledge has accumulated from past experiences, the heavy hand of these experiences places boundaries on current knowledge; especially on the ways professionals define problems and think about processes. The Transportation Experience provides perspective for the collections of models and techniques that are the essence of transportation science, and also expands the boundaries of current knowledge of the field.

 

The book is available for pre-order at Oxford University Press,  Amazon and Barnes and Noble