I’ve been asked to submit a proposal for the next Congress for New Urbanism in May of 2018 by one of the organizers in Savannah, Georgia. I declined the first two times I was asked, then reluctantly agreed to offer a tentative outline the third time I was approached. I’m not convinced the committee will have much use for what I have to say.  read more »

I recently had a revelation about the American approach to racial integration. We've been doing it all wrong, and its had disastrous impacts on African-Americans. Our cities are facing another integration challenge today, and we're in danger of repeating the same mistakes.  read more »

In my “superstar effect” series I’ve been presenting examples of where superstars (whether individuals or cities) are generating a disproportionate share of the rewards these days.

I mentioned that I had some counter-examples and wanted to share one today. Namely that backoffice decentralization, or the move of less-than-superstar functions out of superstar cities, has benefitted a certain class of places like Denver and Salt Lake City.  read more »

As we write this piece, the whole world is watching in disbelief as rain and flooding wreak devastation again along the Gulf Coast and Florida. Upwards of 50 inches of rain fell in parts of Southern Texas, thousands have been displaced from their homes in Miami and Houston, and some residents may never fully recover their livelihoods and homes. The Mayor of Houston called upon neighbors to help each other while first responders did their best to respond to the thousands of calls for help.  read more »

When Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, followed by a strong hurricane in Florida, much of the media response indicated that the severe weather was a sign of catastrophic climate change, payback for mass suburbanization — and even a backlash by Mother Nature against the election of President Donald Trump.  read more »

New York University Professor Shlomo Angel and his colleagues (Alejandro M. Blei, Jason Parent, Patrick Lamson-Hall, and Nicolás Galarza Sánchez, with Daniel L. Civco, Rachel Qian Lei, and Kevin Thom) have produced the Atlas of Urban Expansion: 2016 edition, which represents the most detailed available spatial analysis of world urbanization, relying on a sample of 200 urban areas. It was published jointly United Nations Habitat, New York University, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and released in conjunction with the Habitat III conference in Quito. The Atlas follows the publication of Angel's Planet of Cities, published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy which was reviewed in New Geography in A Planet of People: Angel's Planet of Cities.  read more »

Every generation seems to be lionized by the press with the observation that the values of the new group are not that of their parents, thank goodness. They don’t have the serious hunger for possessions, the terrible acquisitiveness for material things that define their parents’ generation. Rather, as seen by the reporter, they have loftier views of society, generally the views of the reporter or the views that the reporter wishes to have us believe they hold. One recalls how the baby boomers were “not like us”.  read more »

Columbus, Ohio is a Midwest city that has really turned it on in the last few years. It is a big economic and demographic success story in the region. Having recently crossed over to reach the two million threshold in population, the region is expecting as many as another million people by 2050. The city is basically rocking and rolling by Midwest standards.  read more »