How Capital Budgeting Helped a Sick City: Thirty Years of Capital Improvement Planning in Cleveland

During the 1970s, Cleveland's capital improvement plan (CIP) was scorned as a bad joke, and the city's roads, bridges, and public buildings fell into disrepair. The city's default on its fiscal obligation in 1978 seemed to cap the city's infrastructure problem; there was no comprehensive strategy for capital spending and in a bankrupt city, no money to spend in any event. Yet, during the 1980s, with support from the administration, the business community, and the innovations of a small group of dedicated urban planners, the CIP was restructured and hundreds of millions were systematically invested in public infrastructure. By the 1990s, most of the innovative changes of the 1980s seemed to be institutionalized, but there were ominous clouds on the horizon.