Urban Issues

Over five millennia, through pestilence, war, economic dislocation, and mass migrations, cities have demonstrated their essential resiliency. Yet at the same time, they have many times been transformed—becoming bigger, denser, and then less dense; shifting from having a walking- to a transit-based culture  read more »

Remote work has become a huge topic of conversation in the business and political world since the pandemic shutdowns. The shift to remote that the pandemic response precipitated has upended many of the conventions of how business is done in the United States.  read more »

The city of Portland announced yesterday that it received a $2 million federal grant to get it to ban gasoline (and, presumably, Diesel) delivery vehicles in a sixteen-block area of downtown Portland.  read more »

Whether hundreds of years ago or today, the far-reaching environmental impacts of urbanization are because cities are “a node of pure consumption existing parasitically on an extensive external resource base.”  read more »

The death last week of former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan is a reminder of both how low the city’s political culture has sunk and how strong leaders can help turn around a seemingly hopeless situation.  read more »

We are entering a new urban epoch, with the potential to disrupt city life in ways not unlike that created in the shift from an industrial to what Jean Gottman described in 1983 as the “transactional city.”  read more »

The proper size of government permeates public policy discussions about homelessness, poverty, and health care. The left and right debate varying degrees of government involvement, typically failing to act and often deteriorating into a state of policy paralysis.  read more »

For nearly all the 20th century, California was the national growth leader. In every census from 1930 to 2000, California added more residents than any other state.  read more »

For decades, a large majority of black Americans have aligned with the Democratic Party, but the modern-day Democratics Party's leftward shift may cause a reevaluation of that relationship.  read more »

Nokmaniphone Sayavong started her business, Nok’s Kitchen, during the worst of times—the Covid pandemic—and in a state that often treats small businesses with the delicacy of a cat torturing a mouse. Yet she has found a way to thrive.  read more »