New Geography in the News

"According to official statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States is now 9.8 percent. But those statistics understate the severity of the jobs crisis. The official statistics do not include the 875,000 Americans who have given up looking for work, even though they want jobs. When these "marginally attached" workers and part-time workers are added to the officially unemployed, the result, according to another, broader governement measure of unemployment known as "U-6," is shocking. The United States has an unemployment rate of 17 percent."

Michael in Salon

"Wendell Cox, an Illinois-based researcher who led the study, said New York, particularly in the New York City area, had seen home prices greatly outpace incomes compared with other states. Also, New York is among the highest taxed states in the country, he said."

Wendell on RocEarth

“'Uncool Cities' by Joel Kotkin argues the complete other side of the argument presented by Richard Florida. Kotkin’s argument is that a city will not grow if it only appeals to the creative class. His focus is on how cities are losing population to the suburbs. He also focuses on the important aspects of a failing city such as housing, educational facilities, transportation methods, occupation issues and the issue of safety."

Joel on Suburban Girl in the Big City

"Urban scholar Joel Kotkin, writing in Newsweek magazine, describes the American nomad as something of an endangered species: 'Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st century America as its settledness.'"

Joel in The Chicago Tribune

"In Newsweek this month, the American urban development scholar Joel Kotkin noted a fall in American movers. Between the 1970s and 2006, the proportion of Americans who shifted house each year fell from about 20 per cent to 14 per cent."

Joel on The Age

As a puny yet honest attempt to show you that I actually read other things than plain economics I thought that I would share this piece with you on declining nomadism amongst Americans; it is written for Newsweek by author Joel Kotkin. I am not quite sure whether he believes the aging of the population to be the decisive factor contributing to the rise of localism which he speaks about or just a factor among many. I would presume that sociologists and historians could find an explanation for this development in their distinct theoretical tool kits too without invoking the demographic evolution. Although, it is tempting to go for a nostalgic narrative here I don't think this is appropriate. To me, an increase in physical localism could go well hand in hand with an ever greater degree of global integration and social mobility in the non-physical sense.

Joel on IStock Analyst

"There's been a missed opportunity here in showcasing the kind of youthful, optimistic, hopeful energy that greatly Obama benefited from during the campaign," said Morley Winograd, a fellow at the Democratic think-tank NDN and co-author of the seminal book "Millennial Makeover," an analysis of how the wired and online networked Millennial Generation is impacting politics. "But of course it does not at all mean that the opportunity has gone away."

Morley on The Huffington Post

"You want people working. You don't want them sinking deeper and deeper into depression," says Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the centrist New America Foundation (NAF). Furthermore, he said in an interview, "Employers want to hire people who've been working recently. The longer you've been unemployed, the less attractive you are."

Michael on Politics Daily

Joel on The Marriage Debate

Joel Kotkin, urban scholar and a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, has written an interesting article in the current issue of Newsweek. In "There's No Place Like Home," Kotkin argues that a generational shift from Americans regularly moving in order to take advantage of job opportunities is giving way to a new settledness.

"In 2005, it ranked No. 1 on the "Best Places for Doing Business in America," an annual list compiled for Inc. magazine by California public policy analyst Joel Kotkin.

In the latest rankings, published on Kotkin's NewGeography.com Web site, Reno is No. 314. Sacramento is No. 297."

Joel in The Sacramento Bee

If you own stock that pays a dividend, you can even look at your dividend check to see if your shares are real. If you see a line that says "PIL" — meaning "Payment in Lieu" of dividends — your shares were never actually delivered to you when you bought the stock. The mere fact that you're even getting this money is evidence of the crime: This counterfeiting scheme is so profitable for the hedge funds, banks and brokers involved that they are willing to pay "dividends" for shares that do not exist. "They're making the payments without complaint," says Susanne Trimbath, an economist who worked at the Depository Trust Company. "So they're making the money somewhere else."

Susanne in Rolling Stone

Mobility, a genetic fact of American life, is part a new and lasting trend referred by author Joel Kotkin as “new localism.”
He writes: “The basic premise; the longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive, even in a downturn.”

Joel in The Napa Valley Register

"Michael Lind has a better word for it: 'Nothing could be more repugnant to America’s traditions as a democratic republic,' he writes in The American Way of Strategy, 'than a grand strategy that can be sustained only if the very existence of the strategy is kept secret from the American people by their elected and appointed leaders' (my emphasis)."

Michael Lind on CATO

“Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness,” writes Joel Kotkin in Newsweek. “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 in The New York Times