cities

The Western US has long been an innovator in developing the urban form, notably in the creation of suburbanized, multipolar cities.  read more »

Joel Kotkin joins Spencer Levy on The Weekly Take to discuss current migration trends and the future of cities.  read more »

One impact of the coronavirus has been to accelerate some trends that were already present in the marketplace beforehand.  read more »

The Figures below provide an update through September 13, 2020 to the relationship between county urban densities and COVID-19 death rates. The data continues to show a strong association between higher urban densities and death rates.  read more »

The Figures below provide an update through August 7, 2020 to the relationship between county urban densities and COVID-19 death rates. The data continues to show a strong association between higher urban densities and death rates.  read more »

The folks at EMSI, a labor market analytics firm, have issued their latest Talent Attraction Scorecard. They look at, among other things, the places that are gaining the most skilled workers. Obviously their ranking heavily correlate with population growth. What I found most interesting is their specific look at smaller counties and even “micro-counties” with a population of less than 5,000. Plenty of names you might not know but are worth checking out.  read more »

Most Houstonians are familiar with Houston's most famous piece of graffiti, the "Be Someone" message in giant letters on the Union Pacific bridge over I45 north of downtown. It's gone through a lot of iterations and defacement over the years, including recently, but the fact that it keeps coming back is a testament to its popularity.  read more »

For years, wishing thinking planners and others have imagined a “return to the city.” Of course, one cannot return to where they have never lived, so the whole concept was flawed from the beginning. While the suburbs did less well than before a few years of the Great Financial Crisis and its aftermath, they have experienced a steady increase in net domestic migration in more recent years.  read more »

What’s often forgotten in politics and governance is municipalities are the creation of state legislatures.  A good deal of the population growth in major cities in the second half of the nineteenth century was due to annexation. One of the best examples is New York‘s amazing growth due to annexing Brooklyn. Few people are talking about it but it’s time to consider smaller political units.  read more »

Time Magazine's Sam Frizell imagines that the American Dream has changed, in an article entitled "The New American Dream is Living in a City, Not Owning a House in the Suburbs." Frizell further imagines that "Americans are abandoning their white-picket fences, two-car garages, and neighborhood cookouts in favor of a penthouse view downtown and shorter walk to work." The available population data shows no such trend.  read more »