policing

Feudal Future Podcast — How Cities Really Work

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 19:44:16 -0400

Tired of big talk that falls apart when the trash doesn’t get picked up? We bring together two insiders who’ve lived the fight from the council chamber to the mayor’s office to map how cities actually move: coalitions, budgets, police staffing, and the messy business of making streets feel safe.

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

The 'Defund the Police' Fantasy Lives on in LA

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 11:01:11 -0400

Southern California has always had a casual relationship with reality, but West Hollywood’s decision to stop funding the LA Sheriff amidst a mounting crime tsunami takes the fantasy to a new — and dangerous — level. As usual this policy was concocted by woke politicians and not approved by the voters, who might be less than enthusiastic about the notion of replacing police officers with 30 unarmed “security ambassadors”.

We will see if this action gets pushback, particularly in a heavily gay city that has long embraced progressive politics. Yet there are signs that a struggle is emerging even within the Left-of-centre space, as people begin to weigh their ideological fixations against their personal safety.

Right now, remarkably, the defund movement is far from dead. Los Angeles, which has its own crime surge, just elected or placed first several new members who favour the so-called “people’s budget”, which seeks to take funds from cops to give to “community” groups. In Los Angeles, these Left-of-centre candidates have had strong support in media and gained much of their backing from the far-Left Democratic Socialists, in one case displacing a liberal labour-oriented Latino LA councilperson with an ally of Black Lives Matter.

It would be one thing if this insanity was restricted to LA-LA land. Despite the election of pro-police Mayor Eric Adams the New York City council has become, if anything, more amenable to defunding policies. Much of this could be ascribed to low turnouts, the media’s race obsessions, or the continued contraction of middle-class households in big cities across the nation.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Minneapolis, Today and Tomorrow

Rick Harrison — Fri, 29 May 2020 16:21:15 -0400

Growing up in all white and mostly Jewish Oak Park (Michigan) of the 1950’s my only encounters with black people were our 70 year old landscaper my grandparents referred to as ‘boy’ and an occasional maid. My grandparents lived south of 8 mile and would take us to eat at ‘Little Black Sambo’s’ restaurant. That was the ‘normal’ I was raised in.

Then, my first day in Junior High School, and the first incidence of the new bussing laws, I went to get a drink of water and a black kid jumped in front of me punching me in the face and I came to in the principals office. I don’t recall anyone getting punished for that. Essentially we learned fast to keep away from the black kids. I was not angry at them, but at us white people. Even back then, as I rode my bike into Detroit, I’d see the racism and look at the new ‘projects’ white people built for them that quite frankly I thought shocking. I certainly would not want to live in those instant slums. It would influence my planning of cities to this day.

With bussing – you could not simply hide the problem of haves and have nots. It got me to think – what if I was black? How angry would I be to see my parents and grandparents being held back because of my skin color and what kind of future hope would I have? It did not help that the Jewish neighborhood I lived in was filled with little princes and princesses that judged on the brand clothes being worn, and that my father dressed us in cheap clothing. For the most part, we were not popular and essentially were treated with disdain, not too much differently than the black kids were. I became a young anti-semitic Jew – I was ashamed of my own people until I reached my late 20’s.

Then came the 1968 riots. I lived two miles north of the Detroit border – close enough to remember the smoke billowing from the city wondering (at 15 years old) why people were so incredibly stupid as to burn their own city to the ground? I understood the anger, but could not fathom why anyone in their right mind, or not, would burn the very homes and businesses they lived and worked in. We immediately put our home for sale like most everyone and moved out to the far edge of West Bloomfield, bussed to the all-white Walled Lake High School where my sister and I were the first two Jews. Because the country kids did not judge on clothes, we were embraced in this new school and had many friends. We were far from Detroit and far from the problem.

White flight fostered explosive growth in the region, and it was in 1968 that I began working for Don C. Geake Associates the leading land planning firm which was an incredible experience designing hundreds of developments annually for the 6 years I worked there. Ironically, for me, the riots provided the basis for a lifelong career.

The aftermath of the Detroit riots would be felt in the black community for generations, not just a few years. The overall City of Detroit may never recover – at least not on the planning agenda of the current leaders.

The problem is not just as simple as black & white, but how we are brought up behind closed doors. If we are born white taught that black people are a certain stereotype and they should be feared or hated or born black and taught to hate whites or raised with derogatory terms, I believe that is the root of the problems back then as well as today.

Minneapolis Today:

The City of Minneapolis is far different than the Detroit I grew up in, not just because it’s like 90+% white, but even the worst areas of this City is not all that bad. There are no slums or downtrodden areas like vast regions of Detroit. Is there racism? You betcha there is. It’s like an invisible layer – but is a thick invisible layer. Walk my liberal neighborhood and you will see there’s a ton of ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs. This is 2020 – why do you need to even place a sign like that? The racism is not just blacks, it’s gays, Indians (native Americans), Mexicans, - in other words ‘working class’ people.

This City regulations (i.e. MetCouncil and Minneapolis) themselves in my opinion are racist. Busses are for ‘working class’ people. We need high density mid to high-rise development in otherwise single family areas so ‘working class’ people have a place to live. I’d have a pretty good guess what color ‘working class’ people are, and it’s not very white. What’s wrong with ‘working class’ having a car or a home with a yard they can be proud of? What sense of pride is it to be attached next to, below, or above, another ‘working class’ family with a common hallway for the kids to play? The ‘working class’ are treated as second and third class citizens. This is that unspoken invisible layer of racism – I’m sure well-intentioned but damaging nevertheless.

When the Police kill an innocent Black citizen – once that’s a crime – when they do it multiple times that’s unacceptable. Burn and loot in retaliation only takes 52 years of progress and resets the clock to 1968. Do you think those groceries and other businesses will be quick to re-open? Do you think an employer will now choose to hire or promote a well-qualified black over a less qualified one white because of this riot? These businesses will likely relocate to the suburbs, as well as many residents – just like Detroit. Even worse – how many will now move out of Minnesota? How many businesses considering Minnesota will now look elsewhere?

The damage is far more reaching than a few buildings destroyed. I have no answers – I wish I did, but businesses will move out of the more affordable areas that desperately need them. These mob destroyers of property will soon find out their anger will not get them ahead – only farther behind for a very long time to come.

Minneapolis Tomorrow:

I firmly believe that there are solutions to affordable transportation and housing that fosters a sense of self-worth but not with the current thinking of the regulatory agencies who embrace a Portland Model of growth and need not consider market proven alternatives. This is also true of our experiences trying to work within Detroit. You can’t undo the past few days, and hopefully we do not go down that quick drain of the past. The past few decades our region has been about social engineering – if anything, it’s not working so well, at least for ‘those’ working class families. These few bad police must be punished,- harshly, but I’m sure glad we have the good ones risking their lives to protect us.

Anyhow just my experiences and opinion, not that it will matter much.

Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and Neighborhood Innovations, LLC. He is author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable and creator of LandMentor. His websites are rhsdplanning.com and LandMentor.com