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Focusing on People, Not Sprawl
For seven decades urban planners have been seeking to force higher urban population densities through urban containment policies. The object is to combat "urban sprawl," which is the theological (or...
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Ukrainian and Russian: The Geo-Politics of Language
The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine has been at a disadvantage since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the Ukrainian parliament, this occasionally erupts in violent brawls caught on YouTube;...
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Guess What? The Parties are About Even!
I’ve written extensively about American presidential elections, trying to understand the nature of Democratic success in 2008 and 2012. Many pundits use these elections and changing demographics and...
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No Joke: It Couldn't Get Much Better In Fargo
This week the coastal crowd will get another opportunity to laugh at the zany practices of those living in the frozen reaches of the Great Plains. The new television series “Fargo,” based on the 1996...
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Don't make big-city mayors regional rulers
Given the quality of leadership in Washington, it’s not surprising that many pundits are shifting focus to locally based solutions to pressing problems. This increasingly includes many progressives,...
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The Rise of the Executive Headquarters
Headquarters were once a defining characteristic of urban economic power, and indeed today cities that can still brag of the number of entries they boast on the Fortune 500 list of largest American...
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Why Some Nations Succeed
Why is it that some nations, such as Switzerland, respond quickly to the need for reform – improving railroads, health care systems and schooling – even before the systems break down? And why do other...
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The New Downtown Los Angeles
There was a time when downtown Los Angeles was the commercial center of Southern California. According to Robert Fogelson, writing in his classic Downtown: Its Rise and Fall (1880-1950)"nearly half" of...
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Fracking, Youngstown and The Right to the City
What happens when the Chamber of Commerce, labor leaders, and government officials, most of whom live outside the city, are pitted against a small yet influential group of community and university...
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The Spread of 'Debate is Over' Syndrome
The ongoing trial involving journalist Mark Steyn – accused of defaming climate change theorist Michael Mann – reflects an increasingly dangerous tendency among our intellectual classes to embrace...
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Turn Of The Screwed: Does The GOP Have A Shot At Wooing Disgruntled Millennials?
Over the past five years, the millennial generation (born after 1983) has been exercising greater influence over the economy, society and politics of the country, a trend that will only grow in the...
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Largest World Cities: 2014
The recently released 10th edition of Demographia World Urban Areas provides estimated population, land area and population density for the 922 identified urban areas with more than 500,000 population....
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Insights into Planning for the Future From Long Island
Recently, Long Island-based Foggiest Idea launched an all-new feature called The Foggiest Five, which asks influential Long Islanders five questions regarding the future of the region. The first...
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Silicon Valley’s Giants Are Just Gilded Age Tycoons in Techno-Utopian Clothes
Silicon Valley’s biggest names—Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe—reached a settlement today in a contentious $3 billion anti-trust suit brought by workers who accused the tech giants of secretly colluding...
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Should Middle Class Abandon the American Dream?
Over the past few years, particularly since the bursting of the housing bubble, there have been increasing calls for middle-class Americans to “scale down” from their beloved private homes and seek a...
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The Best Cities For Jobs 2014
As the recovery from the Great Recession stretches into its fifth year, the locus of economic momentum has shifted. In the early years of the recession, the cities that created the most jobs —...
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The New Brooklyn: Girls Vs Ebbets Field?
So much spit has flown on the topic of gentrification in New York City that it seemed at best superfluous and at worst suspicious for New York Times chief film critic A.O. Scott to say anything at all...
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The Evolving Urban Form: Philadelphia
Philadelphia was America's first large city and served as the nation's capital for all but nine months between the inauguration of George Washington is the first president in 1789 and the capital...
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The Hyping of “Big Data”
Worship at the altar of what is labelled big data is rampant in both corporate and large not-for-profit settings. And while there is some general sense that big data arrives at warp-speed and involves...
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Florida: How Fine Art Became Local
Fine art resides not only in the cosmopolitan cities. It lived, as we saw in the recent movie “The Monument Men”, in the many villages of Europe. Right now, we are seeing it living on the periphery of...
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