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Fracking Offers Jerry Brown a Watershed Moment
The recent announcement that Jerry Brown is studying "fracking" in California, suggests that our governor may be waking up to the long-term reality facing our state. It demonstrates that, despite the...
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The 2012 Metro Year in Jobs
Last month the BLS put out the first official release of annual job data for metropolitan areas, so I wanted to take a brief look at this for large metro areas (more than one million in population,...
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Genealogy Of Rust Belt Chic
Some people don't like the term "Rust Belt". Others absolutely hate the word "chic". Please don't call the shifting mesofacts of dying Great Lakes cities "Rust Belt Chic". Given the reaction, a lot of...
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The Sound and the Fury In Chicago
The Second City syndrome is alive and well. An anti-Chicago essay masquerading as a book review in the New York Times provides the latest example of the truth of that. Rachel Shteir, a former New...
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Job Dispersion in Major US Metropolitan Areas: 1960-2010
The continuing dispersion of employment in the nation's major metropolitan areas has received attention in two recent reports. The Brookings Institution has published research showing that employment...
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Visions of the Rust Belt Future (Part 1)
“Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing”--AesopThere are interesting developments being played out in the Rust Belt. Some cities, like Detroit, seem to be embarking whole hog down the...
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Class Warfare for Republicans
As a Truman-style Democrat left politically homeless, I am often asked about the future of the Republican Party. Some Republicans want to push racial buttons on issues like immigration, or try to stop...
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The Triumph of Suburbia
The “silver lining” in our five-years-and-running Great Recession, we’re told, is that Americans have finally taken heed of their betters and are finally rejecting the empty allure of suburban space...
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Enterprising States 2013: Getting Down to Small Business
The following is an exerpt form a new report, Enterprising States, released this week by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and written by Praxis Strategy Group and Joel Kotkin. Visit this site to...
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Bank Collapse in Cyprus: Which Way Now?
Having run out of options to solve its bigger problems, European Union commissioners, in the spirit of famed bank robber Willy Sutton, have decided to go after depositors’ money on Cyprus for a simple...
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Observations on Urbanization: 1920-2010
Ninety years have made a world of difference in the United States. Between 1920 and 2010, the nation's population nearly tripled. But that was not the most important development. Two other trends...
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The Myth of Green Australia
Having collected the Nobel peace prize in 2007, Al Gore’s fortunes as a climate crusader slid into the doldrums. But 8th November 2011 arrived as a ray of sunshine. On that day Australia’s parliament...
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Millennial Lifestyles Will Remake American Homes
As Millennials, America’s largest generation, enter their thirties in ever greater numbers, their beliefs about how and where to raise a family will have as much impact on the nation’s housing market....
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Best Cities for Job Growth 2013 Map
For the 2013 Job Growth Rankings, Needle Analytics has mapped out every city sampled in the survey and visualized their positions on the list of rankings. While a list of data can impart interesting...
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The 2013 Best Cities For Job Growth
The 2013 edition of our list shows many things, but perhaps the most important is which cities have momentum in the job creation sweepstakes. Right now the biggest winners are the metro areas that are...
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Can Public Banks Help Fix Local Finance?
Are public banks the answer for the recession-induced decline in municipal revenue and other ills that plague our cities? It’s a solution being discussed in more than one American city. Mike Krauss, a...
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The Cleveland Miracle That Should Never Have Been
“[T]he most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.” Writer David Foster Wallace The story of the three Cleveland women kidnapped over 10...
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The Average Manufacturing Establishment Is Smaller Than You Think, and...
The common image of American manufacturing, as Harold L. Sirkin wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek, is of huge plants with waves of assembly-line workers producing cars and refrigerators. But there’s a...
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Slow the Presses!
It has been a difficult time for newspapers. The industry has experienced serious challenges due to multiple factors going back at least to the early 1960s when the three major television networks...
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Housing Market Fringe Movement
A year or two ago, pundits and planners, in California and elsewhere, proclaimed – and largely celebrated – the demise of suburbia. They were particularly heartened by a report, financed by portions of...
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