Blogs

The release of the 9th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey on Monday appears to have caused a political storm in New Zealand. This year’s Survey was particularly controversial in New Zealand for two reasons.  read more »

Last month The Urbanophile posted his statement of beliefs about cities, and a lot of them resonated with me about Houston.  Here are some favorite excerpts along with my own thoughts.  read more »

My latest post is online over at GoLocalProv. It is called “My First Impressions of Rhode Island” and is a first take on the Providence region after six months of living there. Here’s an excerpt:  read more »

Beijing's xinhuanet.com reported on December 30 that 11,000 kilometers (7,000 miles) of new freeways (motorways) were built in 2012. This is equivalent to more than 150 percent of the freeway mileage in California.  read more »

The new state (and DC) population estimates indicate a substantial slowdown in growth, from an annual rate of 0.93 percent during the 2000s to 0.75% between 2011 and 2012. This 20 percent slowdown in growth was driven by a reduction in the crude birth rate to the lowest point ever recorded in the United States (12.6 live births per 1000 population).  read more »

One of my lesser historical obsessions has been the grandiose stuff that's been proposed for the Los Angeles area and never built. Things like the amusement park that Walt Disney proposed for Burbank before he put Anaheim on the map with Disneyland, or the assorted hotels, parks, monorails and highways that were given ink in the newspapers but either fell through or were never that real to begin with.  read more »

" The IRS should be applauded" --- it is hard to imagine a public statement to this effect, other than from a government insider. But this was the Tax Foundation, improbably and correctly complimenting the Internal Revenue Service in announcing that its annual income tax migration data would continue to be produced.  read more »

Has the finance industry trainjacked America?

By all accounts the Acela has been a success. Thought it is far from perfect and constitutes moderate speed rail for the most part, it seems to have attracted strong ridership. A midday train was totally packed on both the BOS-NYC leg and NYC-DC leg the last time I rode it. I didn’t see an empty seat anywhere. Which is pretty amazing given how much more expensive it is than the regional, and frankly not that much faster. It does seem to have accomplished its mission of more closely linking Boston, New York, and Washington.  read more »

The latest US Census Bureau migration data shows that people continue to move from principal cities (which include core cities) in metropolitan areas to what the Census Bureau characterizes as "suburbs" (Note). Between 2011 and 2012, a net 1.5 million people moved from principal cities to suburbs (principal cities lost 1.5 million people to the suburbs). The movement to the suburbs was pervasive.  read more »

Wendell Cox questions the long-held and popular belief that lower density cities have longer average work trip travel times and greater traffic congestion compared to more compact cities.  He puts forward several key evidence, arguments and analyses to show that the opposite is true - that higher urban densities are associated with longer work trip travel times and greater traffic congestion.

Download the report.