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Where the World’s Tallest Buildings are Concentrated
Over the past two decades, an unprecedented number of tall buildings have been constructed around the world. The world of skyscrapers began to change rapidly in 1998, with the completion of the...
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The Screwed Millennial Generation Gets Smart
It’s been seven years since I wrote about “the screwed generation.” The story told has since become familiar: Millennials, then largely in their twenties, faced a future of limited economic...
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A Year Into Trump's Peasant Rebellion
A year into office, Donald Trump remains something of an unlikely figure: a self-promoting and well-heeled demagogue who leads a bedraggled coalition of piratical capitalists, southerners, and people...
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Indianapolis Gets Another Amazon HQ2 Win
After just writing about how cities like Indianapolis, Columbus, and Raleigh had already won the HQ2 competition just by making the first cut, the New York Times adds further evidence in the form of a...
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Handicapping Amazon’s Search for a Second Headquarters
Amazon is choosing a city for their second headquarters. The retail behemoth released its “short list” of the 20 cities on January 18. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, well-known tweeter Iowahawk...
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Ground Transportation Gaps
A theme de rigour at transportation conferences these days is Americans’ reduced affinity for driving. It is a pervasive premise: that young people and urbanites only want “to get from point A to point...
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Revisiting the "Big Theory" on American Urban Development
I like to think I've come a long way since the start of this blog nearly six years ago. There are some early things I've written that have become the focal point of my work today, things I tried to...
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The Three Faces Of The Democratic Party Are Coming To A Head
In the wake of President Trump’s first official State of the Union speech, and the positive momentum in the economy, the putative “party of the people” now faces a much under addressed internal crisis....
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Dan Gilbert’s Post-Mortem of Detroit’s Amazon HQ2 Loss
Billionaire Dan Gilbert has posted a lengthy post-mortem on Detroit’s first round loss in the Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes.He pooh-pooh’s the idea that talent was the reason, instead suggesting it was...
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Millions More Seniors in Suburbs and Exurbs
Senior citizen populations continue to increase faster in the suburbs and exurbs of major US metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 populations). This is the conclusion of a City Sector Model analysis of...
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Uber, the “Metropocalypse,” and Economic Inequality in D.C.
Public transit infrastructure in Washington, D.C. is crumbling. Metro and bus services have been cut. Fares have gone up. And, safety remains a problem. After 40 years of deferred maintenance, poor...
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Transportation Energy Costs
The average car on the road consumed 4,700 British thermal units (BTUs) per vehicle mile in 2015, which is almost a 50 percent reduction from 1973, when Americans drove some of the gas-guzzliest cars...
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My Reno Epiphany
I was last in Reno, Nevada twenty years ago and I can’t say I had a strong opinion of the place. It was just another forgettable generic one night stop over on a long drive to somewhere else. But I...
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Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Is A Rare, And Potentially Bipartisan, Feel Good...
President Trump’s proposed trillion dollar plus infrastructure program represents a rare, and potentially united feel good moment. Yet before we jump into a massive re-do of our transportation, water...
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US Senior Population Trends by Size of Market
Around the world, including the United States, senior populations are rising much faster than those of other ages, as fertility rates have plummeted. Since the 2010 Census, the share of US population...
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Rising Car Access Sends LA’s Transit Ridership Falling
Transit ridership is down in a number of markets, but LA’s declines have attracted a lot of attention – and for good reason. LA has invested billions of dollars in rail transit but has failed to grow...
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2017: Transit’s Disastrous Year
Nationwide transit ridership in December 2017 was nearly 5 percent less than December 2016. Ridership for the calendar year was 2.6 percent less than in 2016 and 6.7 percent less than 2014, transit’s...
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Inclusionary Zoning Flops in Portland
As the price of housing continues to rise in many cities, one popular progressive policy idea to address it is inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning requires that a certain percentage of units in a...
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Confessions of a Rust Belt Orphan (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love...
Go to sleep, Captain Future, in your lair of art deco You were our pioneer of progress, but tomorrow’s been postponed Go to sleep, Captain Future, let corrosion close your eyes If the board should vote...
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Getting On The Road To Republican Resurgence
In his bitter attack on the new budget agreement, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, stumbled on the reality of his party’s grim identity crisis. Since the Reagan era, the GOP represented a convergence of...
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