Category: Global

Government architecture

21 April, 2008 (11:06) | Architecture, Configuration, Global, Innovations, Russia, Tenure, Trotsky | No comments

[On Patriots’ Day, which is a holiday in Boston – as it should be! –
 

Finding a decent apartment in Boston is a marathon, not a sprint
 
–my quirky sense of humor suggests that we should highlight the architectural musings of one of the world’s most famous Communists, Leon Trotsky, and be thankful we’re not living […]

Meta-finance: Part 2, the Basic Model

12 March, 2008 (08:55) | Finance, Global, Hard debt, Innovations, Theory | No comments

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday, in pondering how to finance group-benefit infrastructure like public toilets, we introduced meta-finance, a means of lending to a contemporaneously formed group of people for their group benefit.  On behalf of Development Innovations Group, and as research for a paper, Meta-finance, prepared for DIG as part of DIG’s Housing Finance […]

Meta-finance: Part 1, the challenge of group-benefit lending

11 March, 2008 (10:00) | Finance, Global, Hard debt, Innovations, Theory | No comments

How do you finance a public toilet?
 

If you’re French, you invent the pissoir
 
That’s a fairly simple problem in municipalities where every home has its own indoor plumbing, because the need for public toilets is minimal.  Then too, if you have lots of public accommodations – offices, restaurants, stores – you can require these businesses to […]