Urban Issues

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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The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, Associate Director of the Center for Demographics and Policy, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Buy Joel’s latest book, ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism‘

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.

New York’s Surging new Leftist Tide is a Chilling Warning to the West

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 12:10:54 -0400

A red anti-Israel activist as next mayor of New York? In the cradle of capitalism and the largest diaspora city in the world? It may still be unlikely but the meteoric rise of New York assemblyman, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, tells us much about the potential of the redistributionist Left not only in America but across the West.

Many pundits, both Right and Left, express dismay about the surge of Right-wing populists, not only in America but across much of Europe and, now, under Nigel Farage, in the UK as well. Yet rather than a powerful, inexorable shift to the Right, we could just as likely be at the beginning of a new surging red tide.

To be sure, as long as the Left clings to issues like transgender sports, slavery reparations, racial quotas and the defunding of police support, the Right seems likely to prevail. But in a host of key economic and demographic areas, we could see a shift not to the mild Clinton or Blair centre-Left, but to something far more radical, and openly anti-capitalist.

The reason for this shift lies in economics. Even as neo-liberalism has delivered brilliantly for the elite classes, and the highly educated middle classes, it has never worked well for the aspirations of most middle and working class Westerners. Across the 36 wealthier countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the middle class “looks increasingly like a boat in rocky waters”, according to a report by that organisation.

Critically, home ownership, the ultimate symbol of middle class respectability, is fading out of sight for many. In the United States, the chance of middle-class earners moving up to the top rungs of the earnings ladder has dropped by approximately 20 per cent since the early 1980s, while life expectancy in the US has been declining.

So even as the vast majority of Americans reject the Left’s cultural agenda, they also, by roughly four-to-one, favour higher taxes on the rich and government-imposed reductions on drug prices. Indeed a strong majority of people in 28 countries, according to an Edelman survey, believe capitalism does more harm than good. More than four in five worry about job losses, most particularly from automation. Inequality and general fear of downward mobility naturally lead to a rise in support for expanded government and greater re-distribution of wealth.

Current economic changes, notably artificial intelligence, seem likely to boost the ranks of the downwardly mobile educated classes. In the US, some 40 per cent of recent graduates are underemployed, working in jobs where their college credentials are essentially worthless. In the UK, roughly a third of young people doubt that they will reach their career goals. In the US, close to half of adults under 30 still live with their parents.

Low unemployment numbers hide the growing percentage of young working class people who now remain outside the labour pool entirely. In Europe, up to a fifth of the population under 30 is neither in school or a job, most resoundingly in Italy, the EU’s third largest economy. In the UK, one out of seven aged under 25 is on the economic sidelines, the highest level in a decade.

This younger, economically marginalised new proletariat – sometimes called the precariat – constitutes the base of Mamdani’s drive. His positions resonate here, notably frozen apartment rents, free buses and childcare – all paid by a rise in taxes on the wealthy.

New York may be the most alluring city in America for the wealthy with elite degrees, but it faces very high levels of inequality. Job growth has been weak and concentrated in low wage sectors like hospitality and tourism. And as incomes for most stagnate, housing costs have not done the same, rising to record levels this year.

But rising proletarianisation is not just a New York phenomenon. Radical redistributionism describes the policies of one potential future Democratic presidential candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). AOC, a House representative, is also the person cited as the true face of the Democratic Party in some polling. Ocasio-Cortez, also considering a run to dethrone Charles Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, recently endorsed Mamdani, with whom she shares not only a political base but radical economic, anti-Israel and extreme green views.

The other beacon for the new Left lies in California. Home to the most billionaires as well as the highest levels of poverty in the nation, the Golden State has become a field of dreams for socialist groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. This openly Marxist group now has several seats on the LA City Council and seems on the verge of becoming a dominant force in California’s largest city. Due to its more proletarian population, LA has replaced more prosperous and professional San Francisco as the centre of California economic radicalism.

Similar phenomena can be seen in Europe, where an alliance of Leftist activists and Muslims made Trotskyite Jean-Luc Melenchon a favourite among younger voters. German working class voters have embraced the hard-right AfD, with almost 40 per cent, but also Die Linke, which is thought to have won a quarter of the youth votes in the latest elections, more than the Social Democrats and Greens combined. Others embraced the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which mixes socialism with a strong anti-immigrant twist.

In the end, New York will likely not elect Mamdani, in large part due to fear of crime, economic dislocation, as well as the opposition of the city’s still large Jewish population, roughly one in seven Gothamites. But Mamdani is only in his early 30s, and his rise suggests the potency of a coalition of young people, immigrants, and lower wage workers favourable to the radical redistribution of wealth and stomping out capitalism.

Unless proponents of capitalism awaken to these dangers, and address these concerns, the Left may yet rise again to the shock and consternation of those who so blithely celebrate its current demise.

This piece first appeared at: Telegraph.

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 and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Feudal Future Podcast — Breaking Down the NYC Mayor's Race

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 17:01:44 -0400

The battle for New York City’s future is heating up as former Governor Andrew Cuomo faces off against progressive challenger Zoran Mamdani in what’s shaping up to be an unpredictable mayoral race. With ranked-choice voting, multiple candidates, and current Mayor Eric Adams making a last-minute decision not to run in the Democratic primary, the city’s political landscape has never been more complex.

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More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

Watch this Episode

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For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism‘

Hand in Hand: Urban Planners and Some Libertarians

Wendell Cox — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:25:34 -0400

On October 10, The Wall Street Journal published a review of “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World” by Sara Bronin of Cornell University. The author of the review was Professor Edward Glaeser of Harvard University, surely one of the top housing economists.

I took issue with one of Prof. Glaeser’s points, and commented as follows (in the “Conversations” section following the article.

Prof. Glaeser is right in saying “When it comes to land controls, I’m pretty confident that the public sector has made the bigger blunders. However, I disagree with his characterization of the sides as "libertarian" and "interventionist." It is not a two-way continuum. On peripheral development, which is crucial both to a well functioning housing market and housing affordability, too many libertarians are with the interventionists in opposing organic development on and beyond the urban fringe. This urban containment and compact city philosophy is at the heart of much of what has become impossibly unaffordable housing that characterizes metropolitan housing markets from Vancouver to Toronto, Coastal California, Australia, London, and too much of Europe. Tragically, urban containment is an existential threat to the middle-class.

I have routinely dealt with these issues in the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability editions (published since 2005).

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Work Access: Major Metropolitan Areas: 2023

Wendell Cox — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 17:50:51 -0400

The latest work access data (journey to work and work at home) has been released. In 2023, transit commuting remained 30% below its 2019 pre-pandemic level, at 3.5%. This is an improvement from 3.1% in 2022. Driving alone was also below the pre-pandemic level, at 69.2%, compared to 75.9%. This was largely the result of the hybrid work revolution, which drove the work from home level to 13.8%, up more than 240% from the pre-pandemic level. The 2023 figure is below the 15.2% level of 2022.

The strongest transit markets were New York, at 23.8% of commuters. No other major transit market exceeded a 10% market share. Before the pandemic, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Washington and Seattle typically exceeded 10% shares.

Some transit markets in which there were major capital expenditures for rail systems now have shares of 1.0% or less, including Austin, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth and Virginia Beach-Norfolk.

The table below shows data for the 56 major metropolitan areas and national data.

Hudson’s Bay, Vancouver: Mostly Empty, with Elevator and Escalator Problems.

Wendell Cox — Fri, 03 May 2024 19:02:08 -0400

The Vancouver Sun reports that downtown Vancouver’s Hudson’s Bay Department Store, a unit in what has been one of Canada’s strongest national retailers is “mostly empty” and needs working elevators and escalators. But things may be worse in the US. Downtown department store closures have occurred in many US metropolitan areas, and especially on the West Coast. Seattle’s Bon Marche has now been closed two decades, Portland’s Meier and Frank, nearly a decade later and Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco is now slated for closing in increasingly desolate San Francisco.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Across America's Cities, Voters Are Driving Out Progressives

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 18:30:44 -0500

Is sanity finally returning to America’s blue cities? The places that incubated inept policies such as “defund the police” and “sanctuary cities”, but welcomed open-air drug use, are beginning to have second thoughts. In Seattle, Portland and San Francisco (which featured in a recent UnHerd special), lawmakers are looking at ways to curb public drug use — a move that has been symptomatic of a wider pushback against progressive policies.

Take Houston as a different example. This week, progressives lost two-to-one in the mayor’s race, electing a moderate Democrat, John Whitmire, and rejecting Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the reliably far-Left Democrats in Congress. In addition, the city elected more conservatives and moderates to the city council.

In Houston, as elsewhere, crime was cited as by far the city’s biggest issue. It was also behind the defeat last month of a Soros-backed prosecutor candidate in Pittsburgh’s district attorney race and in Seattle’s contest for city attorney, which a Republican won. Meanwhile in Dallas, another city with a serious crime problem, Mayor Eric Johnson, an African American, felt compelled to change parties, becoming the second major city (after Miami) to go to what many urbanistas call “the dark side”.

None of this suggests that Republicans will inherit the cities. The demographic shifts in recent years have eroded the party’s potential base of middle- and working-class white ethnic groups, who are being replaced by both minorities and millennials, both of whom vote heavily Democratic.

The key here is a potential coalition of moderate Democrats with conservatives and family-oriented multi-racial groups. This is the formula that two decades ago helped elect reformist mayors from both parties across the country, ranging from Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg in New York, to Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, to Ed Rendell in Philadelphia. Their elections played a critical role in the reduction of crime and economic resurgence in all these cities.

Like now, progressive politics, lax law enforcement and stupefying regulations brought these cities close to bankruptcy and decay. But today, the problem is arguably worse: an influx of undocumented immigrants and soaring real estate prices have made the situation near untenable for Democratic leaders.

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.

No Parking Downtown Austin Apartment Building Foreclosure due to Insufficient Demand

Wendell Cox — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 19:58:45 -0400

According to Urbanize Austin:

“An apartment complex marketed to middle-income downtown workers, especially those interested in reducing or eliminating their personal vehicle use, has been repossessed. Capitol Quarters was returned to its lender due to a low occupancy rate that made it unsustainable, developer Weaver Buildings announced this week. The property at 1108 Nueces Street underwent a deed-in-lieu transfer to North Carolina's Churchill Real Estate Holdings.”

Are Big Cities Past Their Prime?

Tim Hains — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 19:50:32 -0400

New York. Los Angeles. Boston. San Francisco. Call them America's "superstars." With mega populations, these urban hubs have long reigned as the nation's economic, social, and cultural capitals. But big cities have also been the hardest hit by the pandemic. "Zoom towns" are springing up across the country as professionals leave the city in droves. Even more, the pandemic has brought economic and social inequality into sharp focus for the nation's lawmakers. And some, particularly in large cities that boast the most obvious cases of such inequality, are enacting new progressive policies and laws that seek to combat inequality. For some, this means a new financial structure that makes city life less compelling for those in higher income brackets. Will megacities keep their magnetism in the wake of Covid-19? Or are their best days behind them?

Scholar & Author Joel Kotkin joins Jennifer Hernandez, Attorney & Environmental Advocate, along with Historian & Professor Margaret O'Mara and Ed Glaeser, Economist & Author, to debate the topic.

Watch the video:

Read the rest and see more related videos at Real Clear Politics.

Together NYC

Sami J. Karam — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 12:59:06 -0500

populyst is launching a new initiative, together NYC, to crowd-source and to map sentiment across New York City. It is an invitation to users to mark on a map their sentiment at a given location and point in time.

There is a menu of eleven preset sentiments and one that is user defined. A user can sign in as a guest, or can create an account if he/she wishes to track or review their own sentiments over time. Click on this image to open the page.

To view the map and participate in this project, click here.