Urban Issues

Frequent readers here may have seen me write about my experience growing up in 1970s Detroit. I’ve often said that seeking ways to improve the city and not abandon it, is what propelled me into a career in urban planning.  read more »

As the glint of the Golden State - rub worn by misdirection, doubt, and fear - fades just another little bit each day  read more »

The dominant philosophy that guides North American land use and transportation policy is advocacy of car ownership. The logic is simple. If you have a car you have automatic access to a wide variety of geographic employment options at any time of the day or night regardless of weather.  read more »

America’s transit systems carried nearly 75 percent as many riders in November 2023 as the same month in 2019, according to data released on Friday by the Federal Transit Administration.  read more »

Too often, people interpret population numbers at face value and make a determination of a place’s success or failure based on absolute numbers.  read more »

A net 338,000 people who resided in California on July 1, 2022 had left the state by July 1, 2023, according to population estimates released by the Census Bureau last week.  read more »

Sometimes a story takes a number of years to ripen. And sometimes two or three stories merge in unexpected ways. I just had a moment of convergence when new infill development, sub rosa adaptation, and wartime migration all collided.  read more »

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) and its predecessors serving San Jose and Silicon Valley have spent more than $7 billion (in today’s dollars) on rail transit.  read more »

“America’s treasured cities,” writes semi-libertarian Jeffrey Tucker, are in “grave danger.” He believes that people are leaving cities to get away from “forced closures and then vaccine mandates and compulsory segregation by vaccine status” due to the pandemic.  read more »

Much of Seoul is a sea of high-rises. And not just Seoul: Busan and other cities in South Korea have lots of high rises. More than half of all South Korean households live in high rises  read more »