The 2020 TomTom Traffic Index reflects a huge drop in worldwide urban traffic congestion levels. Congestion levels (rated by the percentage of additional time required for auto travel during “rush hour”) dropped in 387 urban areas while increasing in only 13.  read more »

One of the first lines of prose that popped into my head after my diagnosis was “so much of my life has been spent being afraid of dying. With the time I have left, I endow not to die afraid.” This thought wakes me up in the morning. It looks at me when I look in the mirror. It lives in my sleep.  read more »

I’ll start this commentary by observing that I am not a climate skeptic. As an environmental scientist/engineer by training, I think climate change is real, but it’s like every other environmental issue: a more-or-less routine engineering challenge, rather than a world-altering disaster justifying the fever-dreams of the radical greens.  read more »

Although master-planned communities are quite common on Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, they are few and far between in California thanks to strict land-use laws and an anti-development mentality.  read more »

The Australian Census is coming. It will be on Tuesday 10^th August. That’s the only prediction I am likely to get 100% right.

What are some of the key themes that might be revealed by a Census taken in the midst of a pandemic? I have one prediction which might sound counter intuitive. If I am right, you can praise my insights and almost psychic forecasting powers. If I am wrong, I will bury this article and forever deny its existence.  read more »

Some longtime Californians view the continued net outmigration from their state as a worrisome sign, but most others in the Golden State’s media, academic, and political establishment dismiss this demographic decline as a “myth.” The Sacramento Bee suggests that it largely represents the “hate” felt toward the state by conservatives eage  read more »

Baizuo definition from Urban Dictionary:

"Baizuo (白左, White Leftists) is a popular Mainland Chinese term coined for a specific subset of Westerners who are despised by most Chinese for their pretentiousness, hypocritical behavior and an overbearing sense of entitlement.  read more »

These are times, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, that try the souls of American optimists. A strain of insane ideologies, from QAnon to critical race theory, is running through our societies like a virus, infecting everything from political life and media to the schoolroom.  read more »

There are two key lessons that the US can learn, from the competition amongst European countries to attract knowledge-intensive jobs. One lesson is that it is possible to encourage the growth of knowledge-intensive jobs in regional clusters.  read more »

Urban boosters, which includes the largely urban based media class, often complain that red state governments have it in for blue cities. There’s a frequent stream of argumentation to this effect, such as this new piece in Politico on how states are taking power away from mayors.  read more »