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Working-Class Nostalgia
The first time I presented a paper at an academic conference, I was accused of being nostalgic. My mistake, as my fellow academic pointed out, was that in my bid to find some value in working-class...
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Globalization's Winner-Take-All Economy
“If you are a very talented person, you have a choice: You either go to New York or you go to Silicon Valley.”This statement by Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder and venture capitalist, unsurprisingly...
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World Automotive Sales Setting New Records
The world has come a long way since 1929, when 80 percent of the world’s car registrations were in the United States, which also manufactured 90 percent of the vehicles. Now China produces the most...
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The Irony That Could Trip Up Trump's Quest To Make The U.S. Economy 'Great...
Perhaps no president in recent history has more pressure on him to perform economic miracles than Donald Trump. As someone who ran on the promise that he could fix the economy -- and largely won...
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Them that’s got shall have. Them that’s not shall lose.
My family lived in this building when I was a kid in the 1970’s. This was the door to our old apartment. It’s in a nondescript part of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. There are a million places...
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Detroit’s New Streetlights Show Service Rebuilding in Action
I’ve been arguing that one thing struggling post-industrial cities need to do is take care of their own business, doing things like addressing legacy liabilities and rebuilding of core public...
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Loyal Opposition Versus Resistance to Trump
Perhaps nothing has made modern progressivism look sillier than the often hysterical reaction to the election of Donald Trump. This has spanned everything from street protests, claims of Russian...
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Are America’s Cities Doomed to Go Bankrupt?
I’m a fan of Strong Towns and share their thesis that the biggest sustainability problem with much of suburbia is its financial sustainability.A recent article there about Lafayette, Louisiana has been...
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Doing What Actually Works
Last year I engaged in a failed attempt to renovate and expand an old house in an 1890’s era neighborhood in Ohio. It ended badly. So I thought I’d do a follow up on what actually does work given the...
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Best Cities for Middle-Income Households: The Demographia Housing...
The 13th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey measures middle-income housing affordability in 92 major housing markets (metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population)...
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Kevin Starr, chronicler of the California dream
“From the Beginning, California promised much. While yet barely a name on the map, it entered American awareness as a symbol of renewal. It was a final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”—...
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Nixon's Revolutionary Vision for American Governance
President Nixon, though possessing the instincts and speaking the increasingly conservative language of the mainstream Republican Party all his life (his writings on domestic policy attest to this,)...
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The Brooklynization of Brooklyn
The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back by Kay HymowitzMy City Journal colleague Kay Hymowitz has written a number of great articles on Brooklyn, the borough that is her home. This...
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Access in the City
Access for residents to employment is critical to boosting city productivity. This has been demonstrated by researchers such as Remy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee of the University of Paris, David...
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King Tide
10,000 years ago San Francisco Bay was a dry grassy valley populated by elephants, zebras, and camels. The planet was significantly cooler and dryer back then. Sea level was lower since glaciers in the...
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The Immigration Dilemma
In often needlessly harsh ways, President Donald Trump is forcing Americans to face issues that have been festering for decades, but effectively swept under the rug by the ruling party duopoly. Nowhere...
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In the Automation Debate, Don't Forget the Job Multiplier Effect
In his 1950s satire Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut describes a dark dystopia where automation has led to a world of meager consumption and desperate idleness. The vision of workers displaced by...
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Death Spiral Demographics: The Countries Shrinking The Fastest
For most of recent history, the world has worried about the curse of overpopulation. But in many countries, the problem may soon be too few people, and of those, too many old ones. In 1995 only one...
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The Real State of America’s Inner Cities
The New York Times ran a piece in today’s paper about the state of America’s inner cities – and of course Donald Trump. Their conclusion is that the landscape of America’s cities, and of American...
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Caterpillar’s HQ Move to Chicago Shows America’s Double Divide
Earlier today Caterpillar announced that it was moving its corporate headquarters from Peoria to Chicago. The move affects about 300 top-level executives. The company will retain a large presence in...
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