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

“With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of early times.” (The Coal Question William Stanley Jevons, 1865).

Is this quote still valid, almost 160 years later?  read more »

If you haven't read Part 1 yet, you can find it here.

Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, is someone I had the occasion of meeting a couple times in my career. A little more than ten years ago he worked for Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council, an independent nonprofit organization created in 1934. MPC’s mission then, and since, has been to challenge inequity and create stronger Chicago neighborhoods and communities.  read more »

For generations, education has been a primary means to make countries like Canada and the United States stronger, more productive, and self-confident. Now the education system is not only failing to perform its primary mission for young people, but increasingly works to undermine and divide nations.  read more »

How communities choose to shape their built environment and neighborhoods can powerfully impact a place’s sense of connectedness and how local relationships develop. However, in our time of digital distractions and social distrust, so many projects designed to promote social capital fail to meaningfully bring people together.  read more »

How bad is the EV business? Yesterday afternoon, Ford Motor Company reported that the operating loss it incurred on its EV business in 2023 exceeded its total profit for the year.  read more »

Let’s talk about the nation’s housing affordability crisis.

I recently downloaded some 2023 third quarter data from the National Association of Realtors.  read more »

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cranked up the heat on the “electrify everything” foolishness.  read more »

Data published by the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory a few months ago reveals some of the benefits of congestion relief that resulted from the COVID pandemic.  read more »

When Joe Biden assumed office in 2021, the progressive press hoped, as the LA Times crowed, that he would “turn America into California again”.  read more »

After finishing our first documentary in 2019, I told myself I was done making films. The process of making documentaries takes too long, costs too much, and involves too much friction, particularly when it comes to distribution.  read more »