Urban Issues

Anyone who follow me here knows I write quite a bit about Midwestern cities. They’re what I know best and love most.  read more »

Throughout the West, particularly the Anglosphere, housing costs are ravaging the middle class. Homeownership, long the key to social mobility, is on the decline  read more »

A journey through Los Angeles, the adopted home of Vice President Kamala Harris, offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction.  read more »

Further evidence of the continued dispersion of the US population is revealed by an examination of net domestic migration data  read more »

This paper, by property expert Ross Elliott, explores the reasons behind our current housing shortages and identifies a range of policy measures which have contributed to – rather than alleviated – the magnitude of the current housing ‘crisis.’  read more »

Statistics Canada, Canada’s government statistical agency, has announced that the nation’s Total Fertility Rate dropped to 1.26 in 2023.  read more »

I’ve written a lot about how growing up in Detroit was instrumental in my desire to improve and revitalize cities. Watching a city being hollowed out and disgraced in the ‘70s and ‘80s can have that impact.  read more »

For the last century, no state more epitomized the ideals of upward mobility and technological and cultural innovation than California.  read more »

Sometimes you try to put a positive gloss on a situation, but the underlying concerns that cause the need for such spin come back to bite you.  read more »

Just a quick note on an encouraging article by James Rodriguez of Business Insider. Rodriguez reports a significant reduction in house prices in Austin, Texas, due to building a large number of single-family homes and apartments. I was unable to discern whether the article dealt with the Austin market (the metropolitan area) or the city (which is a housing submarket). Nor could I tell if his insightful comparison to San Francisco was the housing market (metro) or the city submarket.  read more »