When Matt Crisp rang the bell a couple of weeks ago opening trading on the New York Stock Exchange because his St. Louis-based company, Benson Hill, had just completed an initial public offering, it ranked as a happy but unfortunately uncommon occurrence.  read more »

I spend entirely too much time listening to experts in business, government, and academia explain the economy in general and the property market in particular. Looking back, very few people who are purported to know how the economy works, based on empirical evidence, have successfully predicted the wild spikes and crashes over the years.  read more »

The housing and care accommodations older persons occupy often have problems making it difficult for them to age successfully—that is, to enjoy healthy, independent, active, and happy lives.

At least, that is the conclusion of professionals and family members who profess concern for their wellbeing.

They identify the following groups of old whose quality of life is at risk because of where they live:  read more »

Over the past decade, the woke agenda has crested like a giant tsunami, covering virtually the entirety of academia, the media, the corporate world and even the militar  read more »

“Almost all theories of the city are largely qualitative, developed primarily from focused studies on specific cities or groups of cities supplemented by narratives, anecdotes, and intuition.” Geoffrey West, Scale, 2017

This recent quote recalls Jane Jacobs’s seminal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)  read more »

There is an expectation in some quarters that densification of existing urban areas will lead to improved housing affordability. This argument is used to justify densification policies around the world.  read more »

Cambria and Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafes are among smaller companies in Flyover Country that have joined some of our largest corporate citizens, including Walmart and Target, in recognizing a truth that is becoming increasingly important to our economy: The more that legal immigrants can be assimilated by learning English, the more valuable they will be as employees – and the more fulfilled as Americans.  read more »

For a generation, the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors in California handled more than 40 percent of all container cargo headed into the US and epitomized the power of a globalizing economy.  read more »