Urban Policy News

From Ice Rink to City Policy: Oakland’s Financing Lesson

A Next City feature uses Oakland's Ice Center—built in the 1990s with tax-increment financing from California’s now-defunct Redevelopment Agencies—to illustrate how RDAs catalyzed urban investment and how their 2012 dissolution left a gap in long-term public stewardship, prompting debates about equitable funding models and newer approaches like Seattle’s preservation authorities and a social-housing development authority to fill that void without repeating past missteps.