Blogs

A new international report indicates that traffic congestion in the United States is far better than in Europe. The report was released by INRIX, an international provider of traffic information in 208 metropolitan areas in the United States and six European nations.  read more »

The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s cutbacks on its bus line, eliminating about 12% bus service, illuminate the problems of mass transit in LA, specifically the relative inefficiency of trains in the city. This 12% is a further reduction after the 4% cutbacks six months ago, sparking anger from the Bus Riders Union.  read more »

I’ve spent a good chunk of the last few months working on a study of Calgary’s light rail transit (C-Train) system, which was released today by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.  I’ve had a long standing interest in LRT systems, and spent the summer of 2009 working for the Cascade Policy Institute in Oregon, where we compiled massive amounts of data on their world renowned LRT system as part of an ongoing project.  read more »

Zhengzhou, Henan, China (March 28, 2011): In December, London’s Daily Mail reported that the Zhengzhou New Area was China’s largest “Ghost City.” A visit to the Zhengzhou New Area indicates exactly the opposite. Chinese “Ghost Cities” are large areas of new development that are virtually unoccupied. The most famous example is Ordos, a new and reportedly empty city, built to replace an older city in Inner Mongolia.  read more »

The Vancouver Olympic Village scandal continues to worsen.  During construction, the City of Vancouver was forced to take over financing of the project, as the developer’s initial lender backed out due to cost overruns.  At the end of last August, the developer fell behind its payment schedule, and the City placed the property into receivership in November.  The development has been a spectacular failure, with fewer than half of the 737 units being sold.  read more »

Based upon complete census counts for 2010, historical core municipalities of the nation’s major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) captured a smaller share of growth in the 2000s than in the 1990s.  read more »

There are only 9 cities in the United States with populations over 1 million. The list includes New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Chicago, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. With this afternoon’s release of Census 2010 numbers for New York City, the final 2010 data is in.  read more »

Just released census counts for 2010 show the New York metropolitan area historical core municipality, the city of New York, to have gained in population from 8,009,000 in 2000 to 8,175,000 in 2010, an increase of 2.1 percent. This is the highest census count ever achieved by the city of New York.  read more »

According to US Census Bureau data, the Charlotte (NC-SC) metropolitan area grew 32 percent, from 1,330,000 to 1,758,000 between 2000 and 2010. The historical core municipality, the city of Charlotte grew from a 2000 base of 568,000 to 731,000 in 2010 (an increase of 29 percent). The city of Charlotte is largely of a post-World War II suburban form. The city of Charlotte attracted 38 percent of the metropolitan area growth.  read more »

The Providence (RI) metropolitan area was one of the slowest growing in the 2000 to 2010 period, according to counts just released by the Census Bureau. Providence grew 1.1 percent, from 1,583,000 to 1,601,000. The historical core municipality, the city of Providence gained 2.5 percent, from 174,000 to 178,000 and grew faster than the suburbs, like neighboring Boston. The city of Providence reached its population peak in 1940, at 254,000.  read more »