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

The story I’m writing today is very different from the one I started out to write.

The single issue that seems to drive debate in urbanist circles is our nation’s housing crisis. Urbanists of all types agree that home prices and rents are hurting communities and entire metropolitan markets.  read more »

Ford is rapidly laying down the path to the future of the automobile, but in a strange way the new journey is wrapped in its past. That makes for a striking contrast — and promise — in Ford’s revolutionary strategy as the company accelerates production of its F-150 Lightning all-electric pickup truck in Dearborn, Michigan.  read more »

As the centers of media and political discourse, large cities, notably New York, have a unique ability to promote themselves, asserting that dense, core urban areas own the future. Yet in reality, even during good times, and well before the pandemic, Americans have been headed, in increasing numbers, to suburbs, exurbs and to smaller cities.  read more »

According to the US Census Bureau, the year ended July 1, 2021, grew the slowest of any year on record. The driving factor was the Covid-19 pandemic, which increased morbidity and substantially reduced the natural increase of population (births minus deaths).  read more »

While no Americans are happy about the “special military operation” in Ukraine, transit agencies and advocates are positively giddy about the effect of that operation on gas prices.  read more »

The depression-era comedian Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.  read more »

Today, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) divesting in fossil fuels are all the rage on Wall Street these days to divest in all 3 fossil fuels of coal, natural gas, and crude oil, just to reduce emissions.  read more »

That rumbling you hear in the residential real estate market is SB9—either a silver bullet or a boogeyman, depending on where you stand.

Senate Bill 9 is the latest law with the potential to reshape California.  read more »

With our natural resources, our productive capacity, and the genius of our people for mass production we will...outstrip the Axis powers in munitions of war.
Franklin Roosevelt, Message to Congress, Jun 10, 1941  read more »

In his article of last summer “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, Vladimir Putin wrote the following:  read more »