Suburbs and automobiles are necessary bedfellows in the United States, but this is why many experts believe that these low density, physically spread-out communities are the worst places for older persons to live. This assessment should be taken seriously. We know that transportation requests are the leading concern of older callers to the Eldercare Locator service funded by the U.S. Administration on Aging.  read more »

Americans are enjoying summer, lighting up the barbeque, enjoying the freedom of flip-flops, and thinking about weekend road trips with the family. It’s also the time of year when cities sneak out their annual homeless counts.  read more »

On the 18th June this year, climate change demonstrators glued themselves to a main street in the centre of Brisbane, protesting what they regard as a climate emergency and to voice their objection to the recent approval of the Adani coal mine in Australia’s Galilee basin. Their protest caused major disruptions to CBD traffic and has since continued with a series of deliberate actions to block inner city streets and cause as much congestion and disruption as possible.  read more »

My latest article is now online in City Journal, and is about the need for New York to start thinking like a growth city again. It’s interesting to contrast NYC with the case of Atlanta I recently wrote about. Atlanta has seen decelerating growth indicating it may be nearing maturity. New York long ago transitioned to maturity. But then the city started to experience growth once again, entering, if not its historic boom era growth, at least a much higher demand phase.  read more »

The United States is a great country dominated by small minds. The two dominant political forces of our time — the progressive left and the Trumpian right — have a stake in pushing a declinist narrative, one to change the country in a more statist direction, the other to stir up resentment and nostalgia among the middle-class masses.  read more »

I’m not a free-market fundamentalist. To me, the beauty of liberal capitalism lies in its performance: More people live well, and live longer, than ever before. Millions of working-class people have moved from poverty to become homeowners and have seen their offspring rise into the middle class or higher.  read more »

My generation – us ‘free love and drugs’ Hippies – were never going to be like our suburban parents who raised us. Until the Detroit Riots of 1967, I was raised in a 1,100 sq. Ft. three-bedroom brick home on Dartmouth street in Oak Park, Michigan, with no garage. That home (middle) as well as the neighbors (my grandparents lived in the home shown on the right) have not changed since they were built almost 70 years ago. My grandfather built both our home and theirs.  read more »

Metropolitan America continues to expand, based on the latest Census Bureau population estimates and metropolitan area geographical delineations from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In 2018, metropolitan areas (including micropolitan areas) contained 94.6 percent of the US population. This is an increase of nearly a full percentage point from the 2010 census, which found 93.7 percent of the US population in metropolitan areas.  read more »

Governor Newsom is vocally supportive of the Green New Deal that would take us back to medieval times. The Governor’s statement on July 12th was scary. He is looking into putting a moratorium on fracking for oil and wants to reduce the state’s reliance on fossil fuels.  read more »

My latest piece is now online over at City Journal. It’s a look at Atlanta, now bouncing back from a very rough 10-12 year period, but looking increasingly like a city that is maturing rather than a go-go boomtown in its hypergrowth phase. Here’s an excerpt:  read more »