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

Back in 2008 I labeled Cincinnati “a Midwest conundrum.” The city is a sort of counter-example to all the claims that urban design is a shaper of urban destiny. If high quality traditional urbanism made a city prosperous, Cincinnati would be a boomtown. In reality, it’s a relatively prosperous but merely stable city.  read more »

Last week I got a call from young friends who wanted my opinion on whether or not to buy a particular house. It was a simple two bedroom one bath 943 square foot (87 square meter) cottage that was built in 1895. The location was in a fashionable small semi rural town in Sonoma north of San Francisco. It was on the market for $600,000. I said I couldn’t make that choice for them, but I could give them my interpretation of the pros and cons.  read more »

In an age of canceled college speakers and political indoctrination in K-12 schools, I am often asked where college students can go to be exposed to real viewpoint diversity and avoid a liberal monoculture.  read more »

After a year of violence and unrest, large American cities serve as a cautionary tale for the progressives in Washington who want to move the country further to the left.  read more »

As the food industry followed American consumers into better-for-you eating, and Silicon Valley turned dietary consumption – like everything else – into a digital pursuit, the nation’s breadbasket lost relevance to the coasts.  read more »

What happens in California matters well beyond its borders. The Golden State’s cultural and technological influence on America, and the world, now could provide the nation’s next political template.  read more »

The next time you travel through a city, see if you can find many four-, five-, or six-story buildings. Chances are, nearly all of the buildings you see will be either low rise (three stories or less) or high-rise (seven stories or more). If you do find any mid-rise, four- to six-story buildings, chances are they were either built before 1910, after 1990, or built by the government.  read more »

For much of the past century, America has dominated the Jewish world. It has been a semi-sacred ‘safe place’, where anti-Semitism only rarely impinged on the national political culture. Yet today, American Jews face levels of anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s, with half saying they have observed anti-Semitic incidents over the past year.  read more »

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. is one of those people—like, say, McGeorge Bundy, W. Averell Harriman, or Allen Dulles—who has largely faded from public consciousness. People may still recognize such names, but they’re rarely aware of what these people did, save perhaps for some older boomers with personal memories.  read more »

Immigration has always been a hot button issue in America, and our generation is no different. Most recently, controls on immigration have been portrayed as racist and repressive by the open-borders Left and too expansive by the increasingly nativist Right.  read more »