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

Florida and Texas are experiencing dramatic results from the covid-induced diaspora of many thousands of Americans from the coasts to the American heartland. Gaggles of disenchanted New Yorkers are flocking to Florida these days, and legions of tech workers from Silicon Valley are disembarking for Austin.  read more »

My mother-in-law was born in a small town in rural Nebraska in 1941. Her father was oversees fighting World War II for the first few years of her life, so she and her mother lived on her grandparents’ farm in a society absent of young men.  read more »

God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.

~Otto von Bismarck  read more »

The United States has the most efficient and productive railroads in the world. Not coincidentally, the United States also has the most private railroads in the world. Other than Canada, almost every other country that has railroads has nationalized them.  read more »

Under the leadership of Governor Gavin Newsom, rich and poor Democrats have been watching the financial gap between them getting wider as his inflicts heavy energy costs onto the less fortunate in California. Starting mid-August, in the Democratic registration-controlled state of California, absentee voters get an opportunity to voice their decision in advance of the September 14^th recall election date to cast their ballot for Newsom to support the continuation of his policies biased against the poor or reject him for newer blood to lead the state.  read more »

In a recent Brookings’ essay, Senior Fellow Mark Murro and colleagues brought down a strawman they themselves propped up. The piece was entitled “Remote work won’t save the heartland”.  read more »

Australia’s response to Covid-19 has quickly turned from laudable to laughable. For a nation which only a few months ago seemed to be the toast of world leaders for having so effectively limited the spread of the virus and still growing its economy, to a nation now lagging on vaccination and struggling with lockdowns, the turnaround has been dramatic.  read more »

— 3.9 million people quit their jobs in June.

— “We’re seeing the craziest counter-offers I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” says a recruiter.  read more »

What if I told you that Chicago is a midsized, dense urban hub of 800,000 people, surrounded by more than 400 suburbs anchoring a large metro area of 9.5 million? Or that Indianapolis reached its peak population of 476,000 in 1960, and has slipped below 300,000 for the first time since 1930? Or that New York City reached its population peak of 3.4 million in 1950, lost nearly a million people to fall to 2.6 million by 1980, and once again crossed the 3 million person threshold just this past decade?  read more »

Transit ridership reached 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June, according to data released late last week by the Federal Transit Administration. This leaves transit well behind Amtrak, which carried 63 percent as many passenger miles  read more »