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Chapman University's Joel Kotkin on C-Span, talking about the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on urban centers in the United States.

With the new class structure resembling that of the Medieval times, freedom of choice around how to live and work is quickly disappearing for small business people, property owners, skilled workers and private sector professionals.

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER for the upcoming new podcast presented by Chapman University, where world renown author Joel Kotkin and tech entrepreneur Marshall Toplansky are exploring what it takes to liberate the global middle class -- sitting down with business, government and citizen leaders to uncover the trends and share insights and tools to forge a better future.

Subscribe to the show on Apple & Stitcher (Spotify coming soon), and on YouTube for show video clips and highlights. Show notes will be available at joelkotkin.com/feudal-future-podcast.

To read more about these ideas, please pick up a copy of Joel Kotkin’s new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.

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This show is supported by the Chapman Center for Demographics & 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.

Chapman Center for Demographics & Policy: www.chapman.edu/communication/demographics-policy/index.aspx

The life of trade union leader Jack Mundey, who died this week, is being celebrated across the Australian media. He undoubtedly had a long lasting impact on Sydney, but perhaps in ways most commentators fail to acknowledge. As secretary of the communist controlled NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation from 1968 to 1975, Mundey pioneered a boycott tactic which came to be known as ‘the green ban’. In short, if the union disapproved of a property development on heritage or environmental grounds, BLF members would be withheld from the site. The BLF’s share of the construction workforce was such that this type of strike effectively killed the project.

Mundey came on the scene at a crucial time in Sydney’s post-war history. Cost-efficient developments in transportation technology like motorisation, particularly trucking, and containerization ended the industrial sector’s need for proximity to maritime facilities, which had been the case since settlement, and rail junctions, which had emerged in the mid-19th century. This led to a dramatic transformation in Sydney’s industrial geography, including a process of inner-city deindustrialization. The traditional light industrial ring surrounding the CBD and extending westward along the harbour foreshores began to disappear. Transport hubs which had serviced the ring like Darling Harbour wharves and rail yards became redundant. As factory, workshop and warehouse owners moved their operations to cheaper sites in the western suburbs, industrial workers left the inner-city in droves for the prospect of a quarter acre block. Until now, the cost of housing across inner suburbs was suppressed by low amenity associated with noisy and dirty industry. The departure of these activities combined with locational advantages created the potential for a rapid escalation of land and property values.

Read the rest of this piece at The New City Journal Blogspot.

Young Firms and Regional Economic Growth demonstrates how knowledge-intensive and Main Street entrepreneurs are critical to long-term economic success. Metropolitans and micropolitans that started with stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems, as measured by the share of total employment at firms age five years or fewer (young firm employment share) and by the share of employment at those young firms with a bachelor’s degree or higher (young firm knowledge intensity), saw notably faster employment growth between 2010 and 2017 in the United States.

Most Heartland communities did not participate fully in entrepreneurial-driven job growth. There are multiple causes for the subpar rate of job creation in the Heartland besides low engagement in entrepreneurial activities; lower educational attainment with less emphasis placed on innovation tied to research and development stands out among them. However, no other single factor can claim a higher explanatory power than entrepreneurial activities.

Huge financial incentives to lure manufacturing facilities or other operations into a region is no longer cost-effective. The key to long-term economic success lies in developing environments that are conducive for entrepreneurs to start and scale up their firms.

Read the rest of the piece at Heartland Forward.

Download full report here.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a health crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen. But the disease’s damage doesn’t stop there. With millions of people forced to stay at home, the economy has cratered. 701,000 people lost their job in March alone—the worst month for American jobs since the Great Recession in March 2009.

At CORI, we knew there was an economic crisis happening in rural America even before this crash. Small town industries have been declining, tech jobs have boomed only in cities, and young people have left their rural hometowns in search of opportunity. And without good access to broadband, rural areas haven’t been able to tap into the digital economy’s growth.

All those existing challenges made us worried about what could happen when a COVID-related recession hit. Led by our in-house economist Mark Rembert, we created an Employment Risk Index, which ranks counties by how vulnerable they are to losing jobs based on three factors relevant to the COVID crisis: employment in high-risk industries, employment in small businesses, and age of workforce. What we found was troubling: Rural America faces a disproportionately high employment risk.

20th century industries are hardest hit

Our analysis found four industries at highest risk from COVID-19, whether through decreased demand or an inability to employ remote work: tourism, manufacturing, transportation, and natural resource production. In metro areas, these industries make up just 43 percent of all jobs. In rural areas, they represent an astonishing 56 percent.

View the geographical data and read the rest of this article at Center on Rural Innovation (CORI).

Reprinted with permission from American Geographical Society ags@americangeo.org

Aidan Calvelli is Research and Communications Analyst at CORI. He has edited books and articles about democracy and the presidency that have been featured by national news outlets and publishers. Aidan grew up in Rochester, NY and Shelburne, VT, and holds an A.B. in Political Theory from Brown University.

A new report authored by Joel Kotkin, Ali Modarres, and Wendell Cox examines how California's planning policies are contributing to the affordable housing crisis. An excerpt follows and a link to read/download the entire report.

“California’s leaders speak much about housing affordability, but their policy agenda seems designed to prolong and worsen the crisis. As it has done for almost a generation, the state has placed ever increasing burdens on housing developers, and now seems determined to “solve” the crisis by adding more challenges to anyone seeking to expand housing.

The failure of this approach should be manifest. Governor Newsom has called for building 3.5 million new homes by 2025. Yet housing construction continues to be muted, with the 2019 building permit number of 119,000 below the last two years and far below the 315,000 permits issued in 1986, when California had one-third fewer residents. At the current rate it would require more than 30 years to build 3.5 million houses.

Much of the political leadership sees the housing crisis as the result of a shortage in housing supply. However, supply alone cannot resolve the housing affordability crisis. The supply of housing has to be affordable to middle and low income households.

Clearly, the state’s principal housing strategy, Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), has not restored housing affordability. RHNA requires metropolitan planning agencies, counties and cities to zone sufficient land for housing production targets. But land and regulatory costs in the state are so high that builders can earn a competitive return on investment only on houses that are too expensive for nearly all middle-income households to afford.”

Read or download the full report here.

I want to highlight a great development here in Indianapolis. The city of Indianapolis has approved allocating $25 million to fund federal paycheck protection program loans underwritten by the Indy Chamber. (Full disclosure: I am a consultant for the chamber).

The SBA’s forgivable Paycheck Protection Program was such a big hit that the loan funds were entirely allocated in short order. Congress just provided an additional allocation of funds, with $30 billion reserved for CDFI (community development financial institution) type lenders.

The Indy Chamber is an existing CDFI that was already making loans through its Rapid Response Loan fund. The city’s $25 million will significantly scale up this local effort by providing the initial capital needed to underwrite these loans.

These new PPP loans are being targeted as businesses with 50 or fewer employees and in amounts of $75,000 or less. So this program is directly targeted at true small businesses.

There’s definitely a lot of work still to do, but Indy is on the forefront of local communities mobilizing to help small businesses navigate through this crisis

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century.

Montreal’s mayor Valerie Plante has “widened” some sidewalks to provide sufficient space for pedestrian use while providing sufficient social distancing. Where implemented, sidewalks have been widened to 4.5 meters (nearly 15 feet) by extension into streets (with barriers to protect from car and truck traffic.) This action is being taken only in the highest volume areas of the city.

New weekly unemployment insurance claims continue to moderate, but remain at levels unseen before the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, new claims filed since March 1st are now above 20 percent of pre-outbreak employment in some states.

Michigan has been hit particularly hard, with the worst mortality rate in the country and the second-worst share of pre-outbreak employment that have filed unemployment insurance claims.

Read the full article at Heartland Forward.

New weekly unemployment insurance claims have come down slightly from last week's record-setting levels. Looking at the unemployment insurance data and data on confirmed COVID-19 cases, Louisiana is being severely impacted from both a health and economic perspective.

For the week ending April 4, 2020, another 6.6 million workers filed unemployment insurance (UI) claims, as economists anticipated. Last week’s claim volume results from massive backlogs in initial states hit by the coronavirus, such as California and New York, as well as the fact that the industries impacted by the economic shutdown employ large numbers of people. Further, last week’s numbers should include data for those states which instituted shelter in place orders later than other states, like Florida, Texas and Georgia.² Additionally, last week’s claims also includes the self-employed and contract laborers, who, thanks to the CARES Act enacted on March 27, 2020, are now eligible for temporary UI benefits.

COVID-19 Infection Rates

The map below plots the COVID-19 new cases per 100,000 persons as of April 4. New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Rhode Island and Idaho comprise the 10 states with the highest rates of infection, 3 of which are in the Heartland. Though Michigan has a higher total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 (14,225), Louisiana leads the Heartland with an infection rate of 197.5 cases per 100,000 for reasons described in more detail below.

Unemployment Claims Filed

The state with the highest unemployment claims last week is California, with over 925,000 claims, followed by Georgia (over 388,000 claims), Michigan (almost 385,000 claims), New York (354,000 claims) and Texas (nearly 314,000 claims). While unemployment claims in some states are related to COVID-19 outbreaks, the relationship between COVID-19 cases and unemployment insurance claims continues to deteriorate. Across the Heartland region, 2.3 million claims were filed last week, which represents 37 percent of claims filed. After Michigan and Texas, Ohio (224,000 claims), Illinois (201,000 claims) and Indiana (134,000 claims) round out the 5 highest level of new claims in the region.

Read the rest of the piece at Heartland Forward.