Urban Issues

There’s a question I get every so often in social media – “why do you use the term “Rust Belt”?“ Usually it comes from people who live in the region, who dislike the term and wish for some kind of rebranding. I agree. But what’s better?  read more »

With a great deal of success, urban development elites have been able to sustain the illusion that Central Business Districts or downtowns are still the functional metropolitan centres they were five decades ago.  read more »

Scientific American blames the Los Angeles fires on climate change. A Yale University publication agrees.  read more »

So the Super Bowl is set, and the Detroit Lions are not in it.

It was tough watching my Detroit Lions go down two weekends ago  read more »

Urban leaders have greeted the return of Donald Trump with about as much enthusiasm as they would have for a reprise of the bubonic plague. The National Urban League imagines an “extreme right-wing” administration that will ban abortion, threaten the civil service, and end both immigration and racial quotas.  read more »

I’ve said for years that the issues that plague Midwestern cities, and the successful strategies they’ve employed, have gone unnoticed as the cities of the east and west coasts have pulled away economically and culturally.  read more »

Los Angeles is being investigated, pilloried and derided over the horrific loss of life and property in the 2025 fires.  read more »

After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California’s Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso  read more »

From the start, California’s “landmark” climate law recognized that because global warming is a planetary wide phenomena , the state could only have “far-reaching” effects by “encouraging other states, the federal government, and other countries to act.” To achieve this goal, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and leaders, charged with crafting climate policy, could have chosen to preserve the state’s quality of life – the “California Dream” – while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving climate resiliency.  read more »

America’s universities may be a disgrace, but the deeper problems with our education system lie with grades K-12. Higher education still ranks as a U.S. strength that other countries might admire—but our grade schools might even be inadequate for poor, developing countries.  read more »