3.1 Introduction
Finance allows us to move economic value forward and backward through time. That enables humans to plan their lives, both individually and collectively.
– William Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible [1]
Introduction: Where does the money come from?
It takes money – a lot of money – to build, own, operate, maintain, program, and activate public places. Although some people think otherwise, it is just not as simple as sprinkling a little grass seed around and letting a goat loose to keep things nicely trimmed. The purpose of this chapter is to outline how public realm projects are funded. We will try to answer these simple questions:
- How much will it cost to design and build and how will we pay for that big, one-time cost?
- How much will it cost every year to operate, maintain, and program and how will we cover those costs every year in perpetuity?
- How do you establish and maintain a project budget?
- What are “sources and uses of funds” and what is “the gap”
- How does the timing of cash flows affect project implementation and ongoing operations?
- Goetzmann, William N., Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible, Revised Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017 ↵