Newgeography.com - Economic, demographic, and political commentary about places

For generations, pundits the world over have insisted that the future will be forged elsewhere — Europe for some, Japan for others and, more recently, China. Yet, in reality, the United States and Canada may well be best positioned for a changing world, if our leaders can leverage our natural advantages.  read more »

In recent decades, progressive politics has been underwritten by the ascendant economic titans of capital, technology, and communication. Big Tech and financial firms have long financed Democratic causes, led by those such as George Soros and the now-disgraced crypto-master Sam Bankman-Fried, who was released last month on a $250 million bail deal.  read more »

Is charity still charity when it is performed for uncharitable reasons?

Looking beyond the “aw, neat, what a great person” façade of “effective altruism,” (see here, with a grain of salt… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism ) one clearly finds a level of narcissistic cynicism and a will to the permanent power that financial immortality affords that is only matched by the level of the funds being dispersed.  read more »

If you’ve read this blog over the years you know that I’ve increasingly written about a general staleness in urbanist discourse. I’ve characterized it as seeing a need for new ideas in urbanism discourse, superstar cities becoming the victims of their own success, or the needs of interior cities being glossed over in favor of the coasts.  read more »

One of the reasons I started writing my newsletter was that I saw so many young men turning to online gurus for life advice rather than seeking direction from traditional institutions and authority figures, particularly the church.  read more »

The newly published US Census Bureau state and District of Columbia population estimates contain some surprises about changing growth and net domestic migration (movement between states) patterns.  read more »

Americans drove 0.6 percent more miles in October 2022 than the same month in 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration.  read more »

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times recently wrote a piece in which he questioned several top academics in economics and real estate on whether two outcomes of the Covid pandemic  read more »

In a recent YouTube video Avoid These Cities (Housing Crash 2022) EPB Research provides an analysis of the national market. In general, West Coast is bad and East Coast is OK, especially the southeast. The overly regulated western states with higher raw land prices and huge city fees result in higher home prices.  read more »

Yesterday, Tyler Cowan mentioned in the Marginal Revolution blog that he wished books on urban areas “would spend more time discussing whether dense urban areas are simply a fertility trap.”  read more »