The Festival Marketplace as Public Policy: Guidelines for Future Policy Decisions

Abstract

The festival marketplace is one type of large development project being undertaken by partnerships of governments and private businesses. In many cases these projects are risky and heavily subsidized by the public sector. The question that prompted my research was whether providing a public subsidy for these large development projects is good public policy. Do their impacts usually justify the public risk and expenditure? Little analytical work has been done on this question by either practitioners or academics. To answer the question, I have used the available literature and an in-depth case study of Underground Atlanta, a festival marketplace scheduled to open in 1989. I first describe key dimensions of evaluating such projects, then note the obstacles to performing a defensible evaluation. I conclude with a number of guidelines for planners and local politicians involved in making decisions on these large-scale development projects.