Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg has a new, ambitious economic development plan for the city. Pat Mulloy is the man in charge of making it happen. Mulloy, a lawyer who spent most of his career managing senior living companies, joined Greenberg as deputy mayor for economic development earlier this year. In this WDRB+ Studio conversation with WDRB's Chris Otts, Mulloy discussed the broad goals of the plan and how Mulloy plans to prevent it from languishing on a shelf with little action, like so many previous plans have over the years.
In the conversation, Mulloy touched on:
-Why making it easier to build housing, including low-priced housing in every neighborhood, is a “moral imperative”
-The importance of international immigration to Louisville’s growth
-Remaking downtown in the remote work era
-How Louisville might follow in the steps of Austin and Nashville
-How to boost entrepreneurial activity and venture capital
-Why it all revolves the success of the University of Louisville
View video of the conversation on the WDRB News YouTube page.
Recorded: Dec. 20, 2023
Journalist Alec MacGillis joins the podcast to discuss his recent book, "FULFILLMENT: Winning and Losing in One-Click America," which uses Amazon as a frame to explore regional inequality in the U.S. MacGillis writes that Amazon that has three types of towns: its software development-engineering towns, its data center towns and its warehouse towns. What is the impact of these broad economic forces on 'warehouse towns' like Louisville? How is blue-collar work different now than decades ago? What are the political ramifications of growing disparities between 'hyper-prosperous' places like Washington D.C. and 'left behind' places like Baltimore?