Urban Issues

Even today amid a mounting exodus among those who can afford it, and with its appeal diminished to businesses and newcomers, California, legendary state of American dreams, continues to inspire optimism among progressive boosters.  read more »

Late in the last decade, domestic migrants began moving to smaller metropolitan areas and micropolitan areas (CBSA’s) as domestic migration to the larger metropolitan areas fell. The trend was covered in “Domestic Migration to Dispersion Accelerates (Even Before Covid).” The trend has continued, especially in the year ended July 1, 2021, according to Census Bureau estimates.  read more »

Nothing has revealed the class divide in the U.S. quite like runaway inflation and skyrocketing gas prices. But in addition to the economic impact the staggering incompetence of the Biden administration is having on the working class, there is a political one; it's undeniably driving working class voters even further from the Democrats and toward the GOP.  read more »

Net domestic migration losses spiked perhaps as never before in the pandemic year of 2021 among urban core counties --- the counties that contain the urban cores  read more »

The notion that “the arc of history” favors humanity extends across the political spectrum from George W. Bush to Barack Obama.  read more »

The Census Bureau recently released data on domestic migration that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their findings were heavily covered in the press with headlines such as “Cities Lost Population in 2021” and “The pandemic city exodus revealed: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago lost the most residents.”  read more »

The story I’m writing today is very different from the one I started out to write.

The single issue that seems to drive debate in urbanist circles is our nation’s housing crisis. Urbanists of all types agree that home prices and rents are hurting communities and entire metropolitan markets.  read more »

As the centers of media and political discourse, large cities, notably New York, have a unique ability to promote themselves, asserting that dense, core urban areas own the future. Yet in reality, even during good times, and well before the pandemic, Americans have been headed, in increasing numbers, to suburbs, exurbs and to smaller cities.  read more »

According to the US Census Bureau, the year ended July 1, 2021, grew the slowest of any year on record. The driving factor was the Covid-19 pandemic, which increased morbidity and substantially reduced the natural increase of population (births minus deaths).  read more »

While no Americans are happy about the “special military operation” in Ukraine, transit agencies and advocates are positively giddy about the effect of that operation on gas prices.  read more »