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

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just finalized its regulation requiring that new cars and light trucks (light vehicles) achieve average fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon (MPG) by 2025 (4.3 liters per 100 kilometers). This increase in the "CAFE" standard (Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency) is the second major step in the Obama Administration's program to improve light vehicle fuel efficiency. In 2010, EPA adopted regulations requiring 35.5 MPG average by 2016 (6.6 liters per 100 kilometers).  read more »

Bits and pieces of ideal cities have been incorporated into real ones; traffic projects and housing schemes are habitually introduced by their sponsors as at least preliminary steps to paradise. The ideal city gives us the authority to castigate the real one; while the sore itch of real cities goads us into creating ideal ones. Jonathan Raban, from Soft City

There’s a spot in Cleveland that is becoming what many had hoped for: a bit vibrant, a bit hip, with breweries, local retail, and farm-to-table restaurants turning that hard rawness of a disinvested Rust Belt city strip into a thing less raw.  read more »

Had the 1789 constitutional amendments protected travel alongside the rights to freedom of the press, religion, and assembly, the United States might be a less xenophobic country. It might be less prone to treat arriving tourists as terror suspects, and more encouraging to those of its own citizens who want to explore the world’s darker corners. Instead, foreign travel in the age of terror feels more like an imperial favor than a constitutional right.  read more »

Recently, the McKinsey Global Institute published its report 'The Most Dynamic Cities in 2025' in Foreign Policy, a highly respected US journal. On this list, 27 mainland Chinese cities as well as Hong Kong took top spots alongside Shanghai and Beijing, leaving many other world-renowned metropolises far behind.

As a Chinese who has lived through China's transformation over the past two decades, I was hardly surprised by the results of this report. What really shocked me was the doubt and controversy that this report generated in western media, especially the negativity in the heated discussions published in the very same issue of Foreign Policy.  read more »

Much is said about class warfare in contemporary America, and there’s justifiable anger at the impoverishment of much of the middle and working classes. The Pew Research Center recently dubbed the 2000s a “lost decade” for middle-income earners — some 85% of Americans in that category feel it’s now more difficult to maintain their standard of living than at the beginning of the millennium, according to a Pew survey.  read more »

São Paulo is Brazil's largest urban area and ranks among the top 10 most populous in the world. Between 1950 and 1975, São Paulo was also among the globe’s fastest growing urban areas. For two decades starting in 1980 São Paulo ranked fourth in population among the world's urban areas, but has been displaced by much faster growing urban areas like Manila and Delhi.  read more »

A proposal by Senator Michael Rubio (SB 317) to loosen California's landmark environmental protection law commonly known as CEQA, has been shelved. The proposed legislation was intended to exempt the Central Valley rail construction project from CEQA requirements, thereby removing the threat of environmental litigation against the project.  read more »

“Rust Belt Chic is the opposite of Creative Class Chic. The latter [is] the globalization of hip and cool. Wondering how Pittsburgh can be more like Austin is an absurd enterprise and, ultimately, counterproductive. I want to visit the Cleveland of Harvey Pekar, not the Miami of LeBron James. I can find King James World just about anywhere. Give me more Rust Belt Chic.” Jim Russell, blogger at Burgh Diaspora

National interest in a Rust Belt “revival” has blossomed. There are the spreads in Details, Atlantic Cities, and Salon, as well as an NPR Morning Edition feature. And so many Rust Belters are beginning to strut a little, albeit cautiously–kind of like a guy with newly-minted renown who’s constantly poking around for the “kick me” sign, if only because he has a history of being kicked.  read more »

“The history of cities can be described as the history of water.” — UK Urbanist Matthew Gandy, 2003

In Cebu City, the second largest city in the Philippines, that particular history is being rewritten in a way never seen anywhere before. Contrary to the well-known major municipal water privatizations of the last two decades (including that of Manila), the existing utility in Cebu City is not functionally obsolete, nor has it been systematically de-funded in order to justify a contract with a private vendor. Here, the city’s individual entrepreneurs have bypassed the municipal provider on their own.  read more »

Stanley Kurtz's new book, Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities describes political forces closely tied to President Obama who have pursued an agenda to "destroy" the suburbs for many years.  read more »