If one can count The Three Ways Policy Goes Wrong and if one can answer the question If Policy Goes Bad in Three Basic Ways, What Should Be Done About It?, where does that leave the city?
It leaves the city, over time, better off: bad policy cannot hold the city.
There are only so many times that a few can insist that pigs’ ears are silk purses. Those times are nearly used up, albeit at a vast cost.
This underlies optimism: that experience itself refutes past and present claims in favor of big-ticket, but bad-policy, solutions.
That’s an uncomfortable spot for the advocates of the big projects of the past, but a good spot for Whitewater.