Urban Issues

Donohue's and the Soul of the City

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From the outside, Donohue’s Steak House looks like it belongs to another era—and maybe that’s part of its charm.  read more »

ICE Backlash is Pushing LA Towards New York Style Chaos

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Los Angeles politicians have long dreamt of their city overtaking New York as North America’s dominant economic centre.  read more »

Under Zohran Mamdani, the Jewish Exodus from New York Likely to Accelerate

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Zohran Mamdani may represent the future of New York, but only by destroying the secrets of its past success. The city, even under the quasi-socialist mayor Fiorello La Guardia, has from its Dutch days been a fundamentally capitalist enterprise.  read more »

Homes for Hipsters

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More than his good looks, charm and great social-media game, the biggest reason that Zohran Mamdani may become New York’s next mayor grows from his focus on the city’s affordability crisis, most of which is tied to high housing prices.  read more »

Carney's Canada Will Devolve into Feudalism

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Canada may have severed its feudal ties less violently, but like America, it experienced far less sustained aristocratic domination than either of its two mother countries, France and Great Britain.  read more »

The Cruel Inhumanity of the YIMBY Movement

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A large and ever-expanding body of research demonstrates what anyone with a reasonable functional frontal cortex knows instinctively: Human beings benefit in myriad ways – physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually – from spending time in nature.  read more »

AI is Killing Jobs and Fueling Campus Radicalism

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Revolution and disruption rarely stem from the poor and destitute, but from what Alexis de Tocqueville described as “a revolution of rising expectations”.  read more »

New Report: How to Save Our Urban Centers

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“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.” — Aristotle

American cities face an existential choice. They can continue down their current path – adopting policies that work against the interests of local residents – or develop new approaches to make urban life work for the broad majority.  read more »

Affordable Housing for $1.3 Million Per Unit

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The Washington Post has discovered that there are “inefficiencies” in the nation’s affordable housing programs, including its largest one, low-income housing tax credits.  read more »

What's the Matter with Los Angeles?

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Los Angeles is reeling once again from urban disturbances, as it did in 1965, 1992 and 2020. After each outbreak the city is widely seen as a hopeless disaster  read more »