Clik here to view.
Those millions of New 'Green' Jobs are Going to China and India
When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently urged workers upset by the Biden administration’s decision to scuttle the Keystone XL pipeline to “learn to make solar panels”, he was oblivious to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Smart Cities and Finance
I’ve been asked to contribute to a book about smart cities and finance. I looked over the long list of tentative chapter titles provided by the publisher and it’s clearly meant to be an optimistic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fisker-Foxconn Could Get Region Deeper Into EV Era
If Fisker ends up building electric vehicles with Foxconn Technology Group in Wisconsin, as seems likely, the stunning new development could make a huge winner out of what was an economic-development...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Government Has a Trust Problem. It Will Take Time to Restore
It’s well known by now that trust in American institutions has been in decline. Frankly, that’s in part deserved. It’s objectively the case, for example, that we responded far worse to the coronavirus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dark Side of Japan's Bullet Trains
In 1964, the Japanese National Railways (JNR) was on a roll. The state-owned but largely unsubsidized company had just finished seven years of uninterrupted profits. Moreover, in 1964 it opened the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Transformational Role of Remote Work
One of the most significant effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a large increase in remote work. The ability to work from home has rescued the U.S. and the world from a steeper economic decline....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tale of Two Middle Classes in SoCal
Anyone who’s not concerned about the state of the middle class in SoCal should consider recent public notices on a pending auction of the Plaza Mexico retail center in Lynwood a wake-up call. Yes,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Not Just Viruses: What Epidemic Cinema Teaches Us about Working-Class...
Over the last year of the COVID pandemic, we’ve heard over and over that “we’re all in this together,” But the quality (and “quantity”) of public health services for poor and working-class families was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Age of Space Reconnaissance
Wherever profit leads us,to every sea and shoreFor love of gain the wideworld’s harbors we explore. — Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679)Once Westerners were explorers — daredevils driven by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Downtown Calgary: At Risk?
Downtown Calgary is a big deal (see photo above and photos following the text). Traditional American and Canadian downtown areas (central business districts or CBDs) are a holdover from the pre-auto...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SoCal Desalination Plant Inches Towards Approval
In a rare and commendable display of political courage and common sense, California Governor Gavin Newsom has been working to finally grant permits to construct a second major seawater desalination...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Climate Policy: COVID on Steroids?
For most people around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic seems a great human tragedy, with deaths, bankruptcies, and fractured mental states. Yet for some, especially among the green Twitterati and in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Boom in Certainty
Sinclair Lewis called it “the sedate pomposity of the commercialist”. Now it has spread to many parts of society, not always in its sedate form. Back in our final days as architecture students in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
For Work I Got Two Jobs
For work, I got two jobs. I am an academic at Cleveland State that focuses on the issues of city building, and I am a Co-Founder in an analytics company called Rust Belt Analytica that develops...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why More Americans Should Leave Home and Move to Other States
America has been lazily divided by pundits into red and blue states, as if there weren’t constant movement of people between them. Fortunately, reality is a lot more purple — and hopeful — as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bucket Toilets and Casseroles: Belonging, Mutual Aid, and Working-Class Survival
This past year of the pandemic has, for many, been one of struggle and isolation. So films about single older working-class women dealing with economic and personal challenges might not seem inspiring...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Declining Fertility Rates May Deliver Us to Oblivion
For much of the last half-century we have been living, even cowering, under the threat posed by what Paul Ehrlich in 1968 called the “population bomb.” In Ehrlich’s scenario, widely adopted by the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weakest Link to EV Growth is the Material Supply Chain
The worldwide plans for EV domination of the vehicle population are like having the plans to build a large house without sufficient materials available to ever finish the house.The pressure to go Green...
View ArticleClik here to view.
China Freight Volumes Hold Steady in Pandemic Year
China’s National Bureau of Statistics has just published freight transportation statistics for 2020. It tells much about China’s seemingly inexorable rise and its ties to the tangible economy. While...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reasons People Are Moving From Los Angeles to Dallas — More Important Than...
Californians escaping high taxes dominate the real estate news. Yes it is true, leaving California because of high city, county and state income tax for Dallas and Texas, with no income tax, is a...
View Article