Newgeography.com - Economic, demographic, and political commentary about places

Urbanists have been singing the virtues of the city and density over the past few decades, from the practical benefits of density — including more efficient forms of living in apartments and access to public transit — to the economic, social, and cultural opportunities found in urban areas.  read more »

By virtue of being chosen Joe Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California has reasonable odds of becoming president someday—and probably better odds than the average running mate, given Biden’s advanced years and sometimes shaky public presentation. That’s cause for concern, not because she represents, as some conservatives fret, the far Left but because she will promote the spread of California’s increasingly feudal political and economic order, which undermines the upward mobility that long defined the California experience.  read more »

This may come as a surprise, but bicycles provide more 30-minute job access than transit for the average worker in 50 large metropolitan areas (combined). This is evident from data produced by the University of Minnesota Accessibility Laboratory. The 50 metropolitan areas all have more than 1,000,000 population, though do not include Memphis, Grand Rapids or Tucson, the three others of that size. Reports have been produced for job access, by travel time for the average worker in the metropolitan areas.  read more »

For roughly the past half century, the middle swath of America has been widely written off as reactionary, backward, and des­tined for unceasing decline.  read more »

China and India are NOT buying into the global alarm movement. Never in human history have we seen two countries (China and India), each with over a billion people, in need of such gargantuan amounts of energy to keep their economies accelerating and their citizens alive.  read more »

The mayor of San Diego wants to spend $177 billion expanding the region’s transit system in order to make San Diego like “Barcelona, Madrid, Paris.” Meanwhile, Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris are becoming more like U.S. cities, at least in terms of the transportation habits of their residents.  read more »

While it's helped a lot of Americans who are displaced from their offices get their work done, it's fallen short in areas like education and disease tracking and has once again highlighted the digital divide.

With smart cities and the need for digital transformation of government already top of mind for state and local leaders, the coronavirus pandemic's disruptions have provided a sort of field test of how technology is really able to respond to key civic and societal challenges. So far, at least, it's a mixed picture.  read more »

The dreadful death of George Floyd lit a fire that threatens to burn down America’s cities. Already losing population before the pandemic, our major urban centers have provided ideal kindling for conflagration with massive unemployment, closed businesses and already rising crime rates.  read more »

No future awaits those who rage against family, work, and community.

Where there is no bread, there is no Law. Where there is no Law, there is no bread.

— Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah  read more »

America’s elite central business districts have symbolized the ascendency of big cities, epitomized by soaring office towers. But today, due the COVID-19 pandemic, so much office work performed in these CBDs can be done remotely, that their future seems far less towering than in the past. In contrast, less dense areas, notably exurbs, appear to have suffered less loss in their employment patterns.  read more »