Last weekend there was a debate taking place on a very small corner of the Internet. It was about the Midwest’s culture and its impact on growth and development prospects.  read more »

Transit ridership dropped sharply with the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020. The slow rebound in the years that followed has prompted discussion, sometimes in hushed tones, as to whether transit had entered a “death spiral.” That ominous description refers to a situation where a decrease in ridership leads to lower farebox revenue, which in turn leads to service cuts, which further reduces ridership, and so on in a vicious downward cycle.  read more »

The Republican Party’s 2024 platform removed language calling for a national ban on abortion, causing consternation among social conservatives.  read more »

Delayed decision-making, bureaucratic dithering, and the stubborn resistance of NIMBYs have all been frequently cited as planning-related barriers to the development of much-needed housing.  read more »

The last six weeks in American politics have been more tumultuous than anything I can remember in my lifetime.  read more »

This article describes work access in the Los Angeles combined statistical area (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties) from 1980 to 2022, using US Census Bureau data.  read more »

In a post-7 October world, many have finally woken up to the reality that the locus of anti-Semitic sentiment now resides on the left.  read more »

The World Economic Forum says the world faces a new crisis, "One-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from food production." With the world's population expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050, it is there fore "urgent" that we launch a "radical" and "comprehensive" transformation of the global food system - from "reinventing" farming to "reimagining" how food is produced, processed, distributed, consumed and disposed of.  read more »

Joseph Lawler’s learned essay on induced demand, looking at the case of highway expansion in Austin, Texas, is fair-minded, but somehow seems more about theory than actual reality. He talks about downtown as if it really mattered all that much. It doesn’t.  read more »

The state of Louisiana just passed a law mandating the the Ten Commandments be put on display in public school classrooms in the state.  read more »