NewGeography.com blogs

YIMBY Can Populate Conference Halls (at Least)

The Biden administration's Realtor subsidy scheme is the latest flag, but the politics of "affordable housing" cut across normal partisan bounds. A New York Times article examines how opposition to single-family zoning attracts left and right. But, my post asks, what about the broad middle of homeowners? https://timwferguson.com/2024/03/10/yimby-can-populate-conference-halls/

Feudal Future Podcast: Exploring the Impact of Catholic Schools on Underserved Communities

Unlock the secrets of a holistic education that goes beyond academics as we engage with Stephannie Saroki de Garcia, Soledad Usura, and Tony Lemus, dissecting the profound effects of Catholic school environments on underserved communities in California. Discover how these institutions foster discipline, character development, and purpose, equipping students with the tools to succeed in life. Our conversation with these insightful guests reveals personal success stories and the critical role of parental involvement, along with an educational approach that safeguards against the pitfalls that often undermine public schooling.

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The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Feudal Future Podcast: Exploring the Paradox of Peace and Economics in Taiwan-China Relations

Discover the nuanced complexities of Taiwan-China relations and the unexpected preferences of their people toward peace, as we're joined by Raymond Kuo from the Rand Corporation and Professor Robert Koepp of Chapman University.

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More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

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Support Our Work

The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

Follow us on LinkedIn

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Feudal Future Podcast: Navigating the Future of Higher Education

Embark with us as we traverse the complex terrain of higher education alongside our distinguished panel—Rick Hess, Justin Dyer, and Dean Andrew Moser.

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More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

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Support Our Work

The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

Follow us on LinkedIn

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

U.S. Tallest Building Set for Oklahoma City?

Oklahoma City, could become home to the nation’s tallest building, at 1,907 feet, a dimension intended to celebrate the 100th anniversary of statehood. The building would be constructed in Bricktown, near the Interstate 40/Interstate 35/Interstate 235 interchange in the southern part of downtown. Details of the plan are here.


Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Goodbye to Davos and Good Riddance

Once widely considered the gathering of the elite of a future world government, the World Economic Forum is leaving a legacy of increasing irrelevance. To be sure, the snow was good; the AI art installation and occasional forays into witchcraft may have stirred some; but the whole thing has devolved into a cocktail party for the self-important, with diminishing bearing on world politics.

The interconnected world envisioned by the WEF is disintegrating. Indeed, it has fallen victim to the resurgence of history and the rise of powers determined to return us to the glories of the Middle Ages. Davos existed in a world that believed in Francis Fukuyama’s end of history, but ended up looking a lot more like Samuel Huntington’s bleak vision in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington was the first to describe “Davos man”, and appears to be accurate in having predicted his demise. 

The growing irrelevance of what Adrian Wooldridge has labelled “the progressive aristocracy” can even be seen in the less than enthusiastic press coverage. Politico describes the contemporary Davos crowd as a “smart set” which “sounds dumb.” In the Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead, pronounces “the humiliation of Davos man”. Even the establishmentarian Financial Times has to admit that “the hubris among the Davos set is palpable.”

The Forum maintains some cheerleaders for policies which have weakened liberal democracies around the world while serving the interests of the rising illiberal powers. The grandees don’t have to travel far to see the results of their “reset” as nearby Germany’s industrial machine collapses, with even its last solar panel plant about to go belly-up.

Green jobs increasingly seem to be reduced to the low-wage service type. The forced march towards renewables has only rewarded China, even as the country embarks on a coal-plant building spree and emits more greenhouse gases than all developed countries put together. The much-ballyhooed “energy transition” has favoured a China that already produces more than four times as many batteries as second-placed United States, and which controls critical raw materials including large concentrations of rare earths, lithium, copper and cobalt. China can thank the gnomes of Davos when it reaches its stated aim of becoming the leading global superpower by 2050.

Other “Great Reset” notions, like the arrogant assumption that large corporations and investment banks could mandate a better world, lie in ruins. The whole ESG movement, which sought to reward “right-thinking” executives, is falling apart, in large part because it makes no economic sense. Even millennials and Gen Z  have adopted negative attitudes towards such elaborate virtue-signalling. An estimated $5 trillion in ESG assets has dissolved in just two years. What’s more, enlightened capitalist funds around the world are in free fall, notably renewable energy stocks, while traditional energy firms enjoy record profits

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.


Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Largest San Francisco Shopping Center Sheds Value, Tenants

A San Francisco Chronicle article (“S.F.’s biggest mall lost nearly $1 billion in property value after retail exodus”) indicates that the San Francisco Centre, the city’s largest shopping center, has been appraised at a value of $290 million, down from $1.2 billion in 2016. The Centre now has a vacancy rate of about 50%, having seen recent store closings such as Nordstrom’s (a 35 year tenant).


Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Shaving Time Off Suffolk County Homebuilding

At the heart of N.Y. Long Island's Suffolk County, new Brookhaven town supervisor Dan Panico wants to remove processing steps, such as at the planning board, from new housing development. This is a first step toward significant new supply in one of America's tightest exurban markets. See: https://timwferguson.com/2024/01/11/long-island-supe-wants-to-build/

Feudal Future Podcast: The Rise of Populism in Europe - Immigration, Nationalism, and the Quest for Sovereignty

How has the mosaic of European politics been recast by the relentless waves of immigration? This pressing question takes center stage as Ambassador Ron Spogli and deputy editor Fraser Myers join me to unravel the complex tapestry of populism's ascent in the West. With the spotlight on Georgia Maloney's prime ministerial triumph in Italy, we peel back the layers of public sentiment that propelled her to power. The narrative reveals a populace not driven by xenophobia but by a fervent desire for reform and sovereignty over their borders, a sentiment echoing across the continent from France to Sweden.

Listen on Apple Podcast
More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

Watch this Episode

Support Our Work

The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

Follow us on LinkedIn

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Sign Up For News & Alerts

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Reports from Urban Reform Institute, Center for Opportunity Urbanism

Archive of reports by the Center for Opportunity Urbanism and the Urban Reform Institute.

2023

Demographia International Housing Affordability 2023

Demographia U.S. Housing Affordability 2023

Building the New America

The Future of Appalachia

2022

The Last Utopia: The 15-Minute City

Exurbia Rising

The Next American Cities

Demographia International Housing Affordability 2022

Demographia U.S. Housing Affordability 2022

2021

Demographia International Housing Affordability 2021

Demographia U.S. Housing Affordability 2021

2020

How Urban Planning Caused the Housing Crisis

Beyond Feudalism

URI Standard of Living Index - 2020

A Policy of Delusion and Misdirection: Rethinking California's New Planning Regime

2019

Beyond Gentrification

2018

The Millennial Dilemma: A Generation Searches for Home

Localism in America

Perspectives on Defining the American Heartland

Houston Resilient

COU Standard of Living Index - 2018

2017

The Great Train Robbery

MaX Report

Hurricane Harvey

Job-Creating Transportation Infrastructure

Fading Promise

New American Heartland

COU Standard of Living Index - 2017

2016

America's Housing Crisis

Best Cities for Minorities

Restoring Localism

Putting People First

COU Standard of Living Index

The Cost of Not Housing

The Texas Way of Urbanism

2015

Maximizing Opportunity Urbanism with Robin Hood Planning

Golden Opportunity Lost: Can It Happen Here?

Core and Suburban Growth in Cities of Western Europe, 1971-2011

2014

America's Opportunity City

Opportunity Urbanism 2014

2012

California Getting In Its Own Way

2007

Opportunity Urbanism

Inequality in Megacities

Opportunity Urbanism Policy Framework

2005

The New Suburbanism