cities

Andy Kiersz's article in the Business Insider  (see Americans are Still Moving to the Suburbs) summarizes data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) to conclude that "Americans still love the suburbs, and are still moving there from big cities."  read more »

The restoration of central city living and working environments has been one of the more important developments in the nation’s metropolitan areas over the past two decades. Regrettably, a good story has been exaggerated out of all proportion in the print, electronic and online media.    read more »

This may be a surprising headline to readers of The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, which reported virtually the opposite result in their August 19 editions.  read more »

An article by Nancy Keates in today’s The Wall Street Journal indicates that more than 1,000,000 baby boomers moved to within the downtowns of the 50 largest cities between 2000 and 2010. The article quoted Redfin.com as the source for the claim.

In fact, the authoritative source for such information is the United States Census. The Journal’s claim is at significant variance with Census data.  read more »

When Rahm Emanuel was Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, little did he know he’d be helping craft a law that would help him as the future Mayor of Chicago. Many American cities failed to put away enough money for current and former government workers.  Rahm Emanuel and powerful Democratic Party interest groups would like the federal government to bailout their pensioners.  read more »

Here we go again!  read more »

The website nerdwallet.com mixes apples and oranges in producing a list of the 10 worst "cities" for car drivers in the United States. The ratings hardly matter, since the nerdwallet.com score is based on a mixture of urban area and municipality data.  read more »

Last month The Urbanophile posted his statement of beliefs about cities, and a lot of them resonated with me about Houston.  Here are some favorite excerpts along with my own thoughts.  read more »

“To understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena.”

“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.” -Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities  read more »

The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has outlined plans to create a "second central business district" at Kai Tak in eastern Kowloon, site of the now former international airport. Kai Tak airport was abandoned in 1998 when the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chep Lap Tok opened.  read more »