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Developing Economies Dominate Per Capita GDP-PPP Growth
The world’s developing economies have dominated purchasing power economic growth over the last 35 years, according to the most recent gross domestic product (GDP-PPP) per capita data from the...
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Battle of the Imperial Pretenders
It took the Roman Republic five centuries to devolve into a centralized despotism. It may take ours roughly 240 years to get to the same place, but with decidedly less upside.Concern over a crossing of...
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Scandinavian Women Do Well, Except at the Top
In which part of the world should we expect most women to reach the top? The answer has to be the Nordic countries. According to The Global Gender Gap report, for example, Iceland is the most gender...
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De-Industrialization and the Displaced Worker
Much has been made of working class pain in this election, but the problems go well beyond that. I don’t like the 1% vs. 99% frame, but it captures something important about our society, namely a sort...
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New York's Incredible Subway
The New York subway is unlike any other transit system in the United States. This system extends for 230 miles (375 kilometers) with approximately 420 stations. It serves the four highly dense...
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The Best Small And Medium-Size Cities For Jobs 2016
When we look at how the U.S. economy is performing, we usually focus on the largest metropolitan areas. But some 29% of non-farm jobs in the U.S. are in small and midsize metro areas. And since they...
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Murbanism (Mormon Urbanism)
I coined the portmanteau murbanism some years ago on a trip to Salt Lake. Mormon urbanism is shorthand for a theory I have about adaptation and resilience. The term connotes a place that has all the...
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Are Compact Cities More Affordable?
Housing affordability has been a tenacious and intractable urban problem for as long as stats have been kept. Several cities recently declared it a crisis. But what kind of problem is it? Opinions vary...
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So Much for Peak Driving (VMT)
So much for peak VMT. The planners and analysts who watched vehicle miles traveled (VMT) trends seemingly peak are no doubt anxious as the preliminary 2015 VMT numbers produced by the U.S. Department...
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Suburbs (Continue to) Dominate Jobs and Job Growth
Data released by the federal government last week provided additional evidence that the suburbs continue to dominate metropolitan area population growth and that the biggest cities are capturing less...
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The Cost of NOT Housing: A New Report
This is the introduction to an new report "The Cost of NOT Housing" authored by Joel Kotkin for the National CORE Symposium on Affordability of Housing. Download the entire report (pdf) here.It is a...
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Can Southland be a 'New York by the Pacific'?
Throughout the recession and the decidedly uneven recovery, Southern California has tended to lag behind, particularly in comparison to the Bay Area and other booming regions outside the state. Once...
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SF Vs LA: Different Strokes In Urban Development
Book Review: "The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles." Michael Storper, Thomas Kemeny, Naji P. Makarem and Taner Osman; Stanford University Press, 2015.How and...
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Chicago Is the Duck-Billed Platypus of American Cities
Census results last week show Chicago as the only one of the twenty largest cities in America to lose population. The freaking out over a tiny loss isn’t really warranted. The comparison to Houston is...
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A 'Diet' to Give California Drivers Indigestion
In the past, it was other people’s governments that would seek to make your life more difficult. But increasingly in California, the most effective war being waged is one the state has aimed at...
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Extending the Reach of Smart Cities
What distinguishes a ‘smart city’ from one that merely possesses smart technology? At the basic level, ‘smart’ implies a threshold level of technology uptake. Cities with fast internet, straddling...
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Trump's Industrial Belt Appeal
In his still improbable path to the White House, Donald Trump has an opening, right through the middle of the country. From the Appalachians to the Rockies, much of the American heartland is...
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Best World Cities for Traffic: Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City, Indianapolis...
The 2015 Tom Tom Traffic Index shows that Dallas-Fort Worth has the least overall congestion among world (urban areas) with more than 5,000,000 population. The Tom Tom Traffic Index for Dallas-Fort...
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Finally! Great New Affordable Bay Area Housing!
These are highly educated well paid workers at a San Francisco tech company. They’re mostly young. Some are single. Some are newly coupled. Some are married with young children. There are exceptions,...
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Luxury Urban Housing, Built on a Myth, Is About to Take a Big Hit
From steamy Miami to the thriving cores of cities from New York, San Francisco, Houston and Chicago, swank towers, some of them pencil thin and all richly appointed. This surge in the luxury apartment...
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