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

Enthusiasts of “the new economy” long cherished the notion that it would be different from the unenlightened, sluggish, and piggish older one. Yet our economy seems increasingly to resemble not some hippy capitalist utopia, but the deeply concentrated economy of pre-war Japan.  read more »

The future of public transit is nearly empty buses and railcars. Yet President Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for spending $85 billion on transit. Although transit carries less than 1 percent of passenger travel in the United States, and no freight, this represents 28 percent of the funds Biden proposes to spend on transportation.  read more »

The labouring masses are restless, as evidenced by the Canadian trucker strike, union drives in Amazon warehouses in the US and in demonstrations throughout the developing world. More revealing still may be the turmoil in the labour markets, where workers are changing jobs, creating their own and, overall, refusing to return to the structures of the pre-pandemic order.  read more »

I’m back. I haven’t written much lately but I am always reading and gathering topics for future posts. Here’s one.

Over the last 2-3 months, I’ve come across Twitter discussions among many self-professed YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) advocates. If you’re familiar with YIMBYs you know that they believe the lack of housing affordability in American cities largely stems from regulatory restraints that limits housing production.  read more »

Shipping is by far the biggest transport polluter in the world. The fuel used is the cheapest and most polluting fuel available for the world’s 90,000 ships that burn approximately 370 million tons of fuel per year, emitting 20 million tons of sulfur oxides.  read more »

Mayors and urban planners have crucial roles in the management of cities. They must help cities adapt rapidly when confronted with external shocks—the pandemic is only the latest one of these. To be a prudent and efficient janitor is the main task of mayors.  read more »

The Shiloh-Scott extension added 3.5 miles to St. Louis’ light-rail system in 2003, yet St. Louis transit carried 4.5 percent fewer bus and rail riders in 2004 than it had carried in 2002.

As an op-ed article in the St. Louis Business Journal points out, buses carried 40.3 million riders in 1993, before the region’s first light-rail line opened.  read more »

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”  read more »

As the recently ended decade evolved, migration from more costly US metropolitan areas to those with lower costs increased. This developing dispersion is indicated in net domestic migration among the nation’s 384 metropolitan areas from 2010 to 2020. This article categorizes the 384 metropolitan areas by Bureau of Economic Analysis 2020 Regional Price Parities (cost of living), and their net domestic migration.  read more »

Shockingly, just to reduce emissions to supposedly stop climate change, the city of Ottawa, Canada is following the lead of Germany, Australia, and California that now have among the highest costs for electricity because of their decarbonization efforts.  read more »