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The Argument for Less Infrastructure
What would our neighborhoods look like if we voluntarily reduced the amount of infrastructure? This isn’t a purely academic question. As municipal, state, and federal budgets get squeezed there’s going...
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Praying in the Streets: Ritual as an Urban Design Problem
“[T]he city as World icon is being destroyed, not by being secularized (it was always secular at base with some sacral potencies shooting through it from every angle) but by being radically profaned....
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Go East, Young Southern California Workers
Do the middle class and working class have a future in the Southland? If they do, that future will be largely determined in the Inland Empire, the one corner of Southern California that seems able to...
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The Emerging New Aspirational Suburb
Urban form in American cities is in a constant state of evolution. Until recent years, American suburbia was often built without an appreciation for future evolution. This has left many older suburbs...
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Recent Population Change in US States, 2012-2014
How are states faring in these two years of modest recovery? Change is never simple. States vary in their rates of births and deaths, “natural increase” (or decrease, possibly), rates of immigration...
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America Needs The Texas Economy To Keep On Rolling
In the last decade, Texas emerged as America’s new land of opportunity — if you will, America’s America. Since the start of the recession, the Lone Star State has been responsible for the majority of...
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Is Jakarta the World's Most Congested City?
The world's second-largest city, Jakarta, is its most congested according to the Castrol Magnatec Stop-Start Index. The Start-Stop Index estimates the average number of starts and stops per vehicle in...
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The New New Thing: Suburban Bunker Buildings
I have a theory about where the next culturally dynamic neighborhoods are likely to emerge and which building types will be the engine of that transformation. It may not be exactly what most people...
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The Jewish World is Contracting Toward U.S., Israel
Recent anti-Semitic events – from France and Belgium to Argentina – are accelerating the relentless shrinking of the Jewish Diaspora. Once spread virtually throughout the world, the Diaspora – the...
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50 Years of US Poverty: 1960 to 2010
Although inequality is the current focus of concern with income, it is in the end a story of the rich, the middle and the poor, who of course have not gone away. It is valuable to remind ourselves,...
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10 Most Affluent Cities in the World: Macau and Hartford Top the List
The United States and Europe continue to dominate the list of strongest metropolitan areas (city) economies in the world, according to the Brookings Institution's recently releasedGlobal Metro Monitor...
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Europe Is Still a Second-Rate Power
In the years after the Cold War, much was written about Europe’s emergence as the third great force in the global political economy, alongside Asia and the United States. Some, such as former French...
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The Three Faces of Populism
More than at any other time in recent memory, American politics now are centered on class and the declining prospects of the middle class. This is no longer just an issue for longtime leftists or...
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Prairie Metropolitan Areas Drive Canada's Growth
In Canada, growth is moving west, but not all the way. The big growth now is in the Prairies between central Canada and British Columbia, the Canadian part of the Great Plains.Yet you can’t talk about...
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Corrupt Illinois: Not A Few Bad Apples
Despite a huge advantage in name recognition, massively more money, and a lift from President Obama, Rahm Emanuel failed to avoid a run-off today. It seems many Chicago residents are beginning to...
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What’s This Place For?
I was recently asked by Gracen Johnson (check out her site here) to elaborate on the possible future of suburbia. How are the suburbs likely to fare over time? This coincided with a city planner friend...
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Misunderstanding the Millennials
The millennial generation has had much to endure – a still-poor job market, high housing prices and a generally sour political atmosphere. But perhaps the final indignity has been the tendency for...
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The Changing Geography Of Education, Income Growth And Poverty In America
In this column, we often rate metropolitan areas for their performance over one year, five or at most 10. But measuring economic and social progress often requires a longer lens, spanning...
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Urban Core Millennials? A Matter of Perspective
Yes, millennials are moving to the urban cores but not in significant numbers when view from the context of larger city (metropolitan area) trends. That's the updated story, based on new small area...
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High Density Housing's Biggest Myth
Advocates of higher density housing development in Australia’s major cities – inner city areas in particular - are fond of pointing to a range of statistics as evidence of rising demand. Dwelling...
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