Category: finance
Rotterdam Crowdfunds a Walkway
Last week we looked at the potential for crowdfunding urban improvements. This week Springwise has a piece on efforts by the City of Rotterdam to crowdfund a pedestrian walkway: [A] wooden pedestrian bridge dubbed the Luchtsingel will span 350 meters and require 17,000 planks. Citizens are invited to chip in and help fund the effort [...]
Maybe the VC Market Isn’t Broken in NYC
Yesterday’s post highlighted potential problems with the venture capital market. A report in today’s New York Times suggest those problems may not extend to the Big Apple: The study, “New Tech City,” conducted by the Center for an Urban Future, concluded that the technology industry is growing faster in New York City than anywhere else [...]
The Venture Capital Market is Broken
That’s the conclusion reached by Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones (I know, I know, but you’ll find he is a thoughtful analyst, really). He is reviewing a new report by the Kauffman Foundation: The basic answer, I think, comes early on in the report: Investing in venture capital in the early to mid-1990s generated [...]
Can Kickstarter Solve Urban Problems?
Over at the Design Observer Group, Alexandra Lange has a very thoughtful piece on how to use Kickstarter to fund public projects: Most of the Kickstarter projects under the Design tab congregate around the themes of bikes, cheese, typography and iAnything, yet there is now a subset of urban interventions. A plastic tent for a [...]
Crowdfunding Goes Mainstream
Want proof? How about a big story in the business section of the New York Times? Here’s what it had to say about the recent growth of Kickstarter: “This year marks the year that we’ve seen Kickstarter enter the real world in a number of ways,” said Perry Chen, one of its founders. “At Tribeca [...]
China takes another step toward global financial leadership
In chase you missed it, last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that China is taking steps to make it easier for banks to handle transactions in the yuan: The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, is in the process of upgrading what is known as China’s National Advanced Payment System, or Cnaps, [...]
