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

Sidewalks have long been considered to be essential parts of America’s social and communal infrastructure. As Jane Jacobs recognized many decades ago, sidewalks are “the main public places of the city’’ and ‘‘its most vital organs.’’ For Jacobs and subsequent scholars of urbanity, sidewalks are active sites of socialization and allowing for open interactions and accidental encounters; they also serve as conduits to easily connect people to their communities as well as create spaces of contention and conflict.  read more »

From the ancient world to modern times, the class of small property owners have constituted the sine qua non of democratic self-government. But today this class is under attack by what Aristotle described as an oligarchia, an unelected power elite that controls the political economy for its own purposes.  read more »

My latest column is now online at Governing. It is a recapitulation of my analysis in my American Affairs piece on Indiana  read more »

A few months ago, we reported on the strong attraction of the suburbs and exurbs in the growth of the largest metropolitan areas (a City Sector Model [Note 1] analysis, Minorities Dominate Suburban Growth). That article showed that from 2000 to 2015/2019 (middle year 2017), White Non-Hispanics accounted for only four percent of suburban and exurban population growth in the 53 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population).  read more »

As long as we promote and encourage the growth of companies that get their start in Flyover Country the economic gains for our region will keep on coming. Often the benefits will be offset by the involvement of coastal startup or exit capital, because we're a long way from being able to completely bootstrap our own continued rise. But there are great benefits, nonetheless.  read more »

Two of the fossil fuels, coal, and natural gas, are used to generate continuous uninterruptible electricity, but crude oil, the third fossil fuel, is seldom ever used for electricity, but primarily used to manufacture oil derivatives that thousands of products are based upon, and the fuels for the various transportation infrastructures.  read more »

My latest article is in the Winter edition of American Affairs Journal. It's a detailed examination of Indiana under 16 years of Republican rule.   read more »

The Urban Reform Institute has published the 2021 edition of Demographia United States Housing Affordability, which rates middle-income housing affordability in the third quarter 2020.  read more »

Clobbered from all sides by the pandemic, climate change and disruptions in virtually every industry by the rise of artificial intelligence, the capitalist dream is dying — and a new, mutant form of socialism is growing in its place.  read more »

Four years ago, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase wrote, or led the effort to write, ten principles of shared mobility for livable cities.  read more »