urbanSTL

Flooding has become so common in this city, where water is the lifeblood, that residents talk about it in the supermarket. Home to the world's largest naval base, Norfolk sits on flat land — much of it filled-in marsh that's now at sea level and sinking. Add to that the sea-level rise from global warming, and the city faces what it deems a $1 billion-plus problem. The seas have risen and fallen before. What's new is the enormity of coastal development that will need to be protected, moved or abandoned.

Like the much beloved, much pilloried Disneyland three miles to the northwest, the Crystal Cathedral is a monument to Americans’ inveterate ability to transform dominant cultural impulses—in this case, Christianity itself—into moneymaking enterprises that conquer the world.

But 2013 marked the end of an era. In June, Schuller’s evangelical Christian ministry, founded almost 60 years ago amid the suburbs of postwar Southern California, conducted its last worship service and filmed its last Hour of Power in the Crystal Cathedral. Hounded by creditors, the ministry had declared bankruptcy three years earlier and last year sold the cathedral.

Over the past seven years, the ties between Toledo and China have grown numerous. Chinese companies have paid more than $10 million in cash for two local hotels, a restaurant complex and a 69-acre waterfront property. Mayor Michael P. Bell has taken four trips to China in four years in search of investors. His business cards are double-sided, in English and Chinese.

Huaqiao University, one of the largest higher-education institutions in China, recently signed an agreement to open a branch in Toledo. There have also been preliminary talks between local officials and a Chinese company about an arrangement in which industrial tools would be produced in China, shipped for assembly in Toledo and labeled “made in the U.S.A.,” which would allow them to be sold at a premium.

...an arrangement in which industrial tools would be produced in China, shipped for assembly in Toledo and labeled “made in the U.S.A.,” which would allow them to be sold at a premium.

urban_dilettante wrote:^ i was referring more to the dishonest marketing than the Chinese involvement. i'm not opposed to buying goods made in China but i think we can kiss our middle class goodbye if we don't start manufacturing things again.

These days, many cities are getting a lot of help from companies that see great potential in downtowns. In some cases, private-sector actors are reshaping central cities in ways local governments no longer have the ability to do themselves. ... The reality is that they are creating the urban infrastructure that they want around them—parks, transit, better sidewalks—in ways that builders of one-off projects rarely have to worry about. “Most real estate developers are about ‘give me a permit,’”. “These guys are about building a community where there hasn’t been one.”

Other companies are pursuing similar visions, from Amazon building itself a whole new neighborhood in downtown Seattle to Facebook’s blueprints for a $120 million housing complex for its workers in Menlo Park, Calif. “Every city that’s struggling, that’s trying to get back on its feet, that’s trying to make its downtown matter again ... needs a private benefactor,”