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

Few things in life are as predictable as the rhetoric of climate change summits like this coming week's in Glasgow. Over the next week, you will hear again and again that the planet is dying and that climate change will cause mass dislocations and starvation.  read more »

My latest column is now online at Governing magazine. It’s a further discussion of Howard Husock’s book The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It. For those of you who weren’t able to check out the recording of our AEI book event, this piece discusses some of the key points.

Below is an excerpt from the column:  read more »

To some in the Biden Administration, the supply chain crisis can be dismissed as a loss of East Asian-made consumer trinkets that, as Vox tells us, we could all be better off without—or as White House spokesperson Jen Psaki suggested, amounts to little more than “the tragedy of the delayed treadmill.” Yet, in reality, a broken supply chain is hardly  read more »

Since 1932, Congress has passed dozens of laws aimed at making rental housing and homeownership more affordable. Many of these laws created new programs while few of the older programs were abolished.  read more »

The world, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are proposing banishment of fossil fuels and are focused on reducing emissions from fossil fuels at any costs, but a safety net of having a viable replacement should be in place before we jump off that cliff.

Banning oil imports, fracking, and ceasing oil production to focus on the symbolic renewable energy as the fossil fuels replacement is fooling ourselves as that “clean energy” is only electricity generated from breezes and sunshine.  read more »

In Netflix’s must-see new series, Maid, Alex (Margaret Qualley) flees a violent boyfriend with her two-year-old in tow, only to discover the gordian knot of being an impoverished, unhoused, single mom. Affordable child care is at the knot’s center. Alex must have a pay stub to qualify for subsidized housing, but first she must have child care to earn that paycheck. While she scrubs wealthy people’s floors, Alex depends on babysitting from her mentally unstable mother (played by Qualley’s real-life mom, Andie McDowell).  read more »

When Matt Crisp rang the bell a couple of weeks ago opening trading on the New York Stock Exchange because his St. Louis-based company, Benson Hill, had just completed an initial public offering, it ranked as a happy but unfortunately uncommon occurrence.  read more »

I spend entirely too much time listening to experts in business, government, and academia explain the economy in general and the property market in particular. Looking back, very few people who are purported to know how the economy works, based on empirical evidence, have successfully predicted the wild spikes and crashes over the years.  read more »

The housing and care accommodations older persons occupy often have problems making it difficult for them to age successfully—that is, to enjoy healthy, independent, active, and happy lives.

At least, that is the conclusion of professionals and family members who profess concern for their wellbeing.

They identify the following groups of old whose quality of life is at risk because of where they live:  read more »

Over the past decade, the woke agenda has crested like a giant tsunami, covering virtually the entirety of academia, the media, the corporate world and even the militar  read more »