New Geography in the News

Urbanologist Joel Kotkin agrees: “Even other liberal places wouldn’t put up with the degree of dysfunction they have in San Francisco. In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you’d get shot.”

Joel on The Trumpet

Michael Lind is quite right to suggest that American progressives need to reflect on their ideological differences, exposed by the defeat of Bush, and I think we need to, as well. In so doing, we also need to recover a sense of the possibilities of progressive politics, and not to rest content with a vaguely progressive desire to steer social and economic forces and actors this way or that.

Michael on Larvatus Prodeo

So big thanks to Aaron Renn of Streetsblog Network member blog The Urbanophile, who today takes a look at the creature known as an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. The EIS is a precondition for road projects receiving federal funding, and one of its components -- the "Purpose and Need Statement" -- determines the type of project that will be built.

Aaron on Streetsblog

The city's ineptitude is no secret. "I have never heard anyone, even among liberals, say, 'If only [our city] could be run like San Francisco,'" says urbanologist Joel Kotkin. "Even other liberal places wouldn't put up with the degree of dysfunction they have in San Francisco. In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you'd get shot."

Joel on San Francisco Weekly

"Houston is your post-racial, post-ethnic future of America," said demographer Joel Kotkin. "It's a leading-edge place."

Joel on POLITICO

Barack Obama may be our first African-American president, but he’s first got to stop finding his muse in Scandinavia. With his speech for the Nobel, perhaps he’s showing some sign of losing his northern obsession.

Joel on Politico

Joel on Instapundit

"Migration overall is going to slow just for the simple reason that the population is getting older," says Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and author of the upcoming The Next 100 Million: America in 2050. "People will be moving less for lots of reasons."

Joel on USA Today

An alarming graph that every California politician should see was part of a recent North Bay talk by Forbes economics columnist Joel Kotkin. It showed California unemployment rising to 14.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and remaining above 12 percent into 2011.

Joel on The North Bay Business Journal

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, co-authors of the insightful Millennial Makeover, also want government to do more for young people. Writing on the newgeography.com Web site, they endorse proposals for creating internships, loan forgiveness programs, and "mission critical" jobs in such fields as health care, cyber-security and the environment. Plus, "increased entrepreneurial resources [should] be made available to youth."

Morley and Mike on the Washington Examiner

Newsweek ran an article in October by Joel Kotkin suggesting that nothing will be as surprising about the 21st century America as its settledness. For more than a generation Americans have believed that “spatial mobility” would increase and, as it did, feed an inexorable trend toward rootlessness and anomie

Joel on PressPubs

​At least according to Joel Kotkin, an expert in urban futures. As Kotkin notes, "smart" is now synonymous with "green." And while our neighbors to the south are consistently on the top of any list of the greenest cities in the country, Kotkin says that's a narrow way of defining "smart." Why? Because commuting to work by bike only does so much when you've got fewer jobs to commute to.

Joel on Seattle Weekly

So who benefits from this collective ritual seppaku? Hegemony-seeking communist capitalists in China might fancy seeing America and the West decline to the point that they can no longer compete or fund their militaries. A weakened European Union or U.S. also won't be able provide a model of a more democratic version of capitalism to counter China’s ultra-authoritarian version.

Joel on Cyberhillbilly

In an essay for Newsweek, writer Joel Kotkin contemplates the significance of Americans moving at the lowest rate since the 1940s. Deeming this phenomenon “new localism,” Kotkin argues that communities are growing stronger, with a new focus on families and local businesses as a result of economic crunches.

Joel on United Liberty

If forced to choose, Americans today are far more eager to label themselves "pro-life" than they were a dozen years ago. The youngest generation of voters - those between the ages of 18 and 29, and therefore most likely to need an abortion - is the most pro-life to come along since the generation born during the Great Depression, according to Michael Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover, who got granular data on the subject from Pew Research Center.

Morley and Mike on Jill Stanek