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America's Largest Commuter Sheds (CBSAs)
Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) is the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) way of defining metropolitan regions. The OMB (not the Census Bureau) defines criteria for delineating its three...
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Small Towns: The Value of Unique Places
Rural and small towns suffer from a loss of faith in their place, and seem desperate to be recognized in our new, standardized world. Plenty of our developed land remains specific and even unique, but...
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A Selectively Golden State Jobs Outlook
Every year, I, along with Pepperdine’s Michael Shires, have what has become the often-dispiriting job – for a 40-year California resident – of evaluating the nation’s metropolitan regions in terms of...
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Commuting in New York
The New York commuter shed (combined statistical area) is the largest in the United States, with 23.6 million residents spread across 13,900 square miles in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and...
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Havana, Cuba–The City Of Scarcity
1. I’m now a week removed from my Cuba trip, where I spent 4 days in Havana biking through the city’s near-hourly mix of high heat and torrential rainfall, returning to my bed & breakfast each...
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Havana, Cuba–Stagnation Doesn’t Preserve Cities, Nor Does Wealth Destroy Them
Before taking my trip to Havana, one thing that I was curious about was how a half-century of Communism had affected the built fabric. While there are obvious disadvantages to economic stagnation, I...
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Hooray For the High Bridge
My latest article is online in City Journal and is a look at the restoration and reopening of the High Bridge in New York City. Part of the original Croton Aqueduct system that first brought plentiful...
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Australia’s Recipe for Urban Decay
Across federal, state, and local levels, Australian urban planning authorities have emphasized the need for policies that seek to limit urban fringe development and create densely-populated urban...
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Commuting in London
According to the 2011 census, the London commuter shed --- defined here as the of London (the Greater London Authority, or GLA) and the East and Southeast regions of England --- had a 2013 population...
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Where Do We Still Make Stuff in America?
The deindustrialization of the United States has been widely considered to be a major force in shaping the economy. It’s one thing to measure where decline has been greatest but where has manufacturing...
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Who Should Immigration be Helping?
Recent revelations about the firing of American tech workers and their replacement by temporary visa holders reveal, in the starkest way, why many Americans are wary of the impact of untrammeled...
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Some Kindly Advice From an Old White Guy
Last month I bought an old fixer-upper for $15,000 in Cincinnati. It was originally offered at $17,000, but I got the sellers down a bit. The place is a complete disaster. All the copper pipes and...
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Green Pope Goes Medieval on Planet
Some future historian, searching for the origins of a second Middle Ages, might fix on the summer of 2015 as its starting point. Here occurred the marriage of seemingly irreconcilable world views—that...
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Comparisons: Commuting in London and New York
The world's two leading Global Cities, London and New York are, according to most indicators, remarkably similar in their patterns of regional commuting. This is the conclusion from our recent review...
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Homebuyers Confront China Syndrome
China has hacked our government, devastated or severely challenged our industries and enjoyed one of the greatest wealth transfers in history – from our households to its. China also benefits from by...
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Identifying Black Urbanists
There are black urbanists. There are African-Americans who have invested their life's work toward the betterment of cities. They haven't always gotten the exposure and acknowledgement that others...
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How To Justify Spending $8M On Something Nobody Wants
The Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Council is gambling $8.7 million on a project to alleviate pedestrian congestion that might exist in 5 to 10 years if we’re somehow able to build two additional...
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Countering Progressives' Assault on Suburbia
The next culture war will not be about issues like gay marriage or abortion, but about something more fundamental: how Americans choose to live. In the crosshairs now will not be just recalcitrant...
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Gates and Borders, Malls and Moats: A Photo Essay of Manila
Home-made housing (left): Refugee families from Mindanao set up shop-houses in the grounds of the mosque in Quiapo. Quiapo contains a number of significant sacred sites for Catholic pilgrimages and...
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Institution of Family Being Eroded
Recent setbacks for social conservative ideals – most particularly on same-sex marriage – have led some to suggest that traditional values are passé. Indeed, some conservatives, in Pat Buchanan’s...
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