The Wall Street Journal reported on May 20 that “Big Pink,” the 42-story pink skyscraper in downtown Portland (photo below) had been offered for sale for a price 80% below what the present owners paid for the building ten years ago.
U.S. Bancorp Tower, a.k.a. "Big Pink" in Portland, Oregon. Source: Cacophony, via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.
The Journal repeated criticisms of downtown Portland in an article entitled “A Fire Sale of Portland’s Largest Office Tower Shows How Far the City Has Fallen,” with the following subtitle: “The once-premier building is now over half empty, reflecting how the Oregon city’s downtown is struggling with crime and other quality-of-life issues.”
The Journal reported that downtown Portland has the highest office vacancy rate of any of the nation’s 25 largest central business districts. Former tenant Digital Trends said that it left because the building was afflicted with “vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors” and that they were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas” These allegations were contained in the Digital Trends lease termination lawsuit.
Digital Trends’ added that Big Pink became a “cesspool of criminal activity and vandalism.”
Big Pink had been built for US National Bank four decades ago. US National is in the process of leaving the building. The Journal article noted that a number of firms have moved out of Portland, which before the pandemic was considered to be among the most favored of cities among urban planners.
New Portland Mayor Keith Wilson is considered to be pro-business. Downtown newspaper, Willamette Week reported that the Mayor responded in an email to constituents: “I wish they’d covered our rapid improvements in public safety, new residents, business opportunities, regional destinations, and creatives,” Wilson wrote. “Instead, they focused on the upcoming sale of ‘Big Pink,’ an iconic part of the Portland skyline, and a business tenant who left over safety and livability concerns.”
The Mayor (who was not Mayor when the problems were the worst) is right to be concerned. Restoring a reputation for central city safety is difficult, as decades of less than desirable results have shown around the country. We wish him well.
This 3 minute presentation explains why both aircraft engine design and subdivision design remain stagnant.
Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and Neighborhood Innovations. Rick has been instrumental in advancing land planning techniques as well as technology for almost all professions tied to land development.
Amid the talk about tariffs and other Trumpian foibles, little attention has been paid to America’s festering housing crisis. This could prove a more lasting political issue in the US, as well as throughout much of the West.
These trends are the focus of a new report (to which I contributed an introduction) on global housing prices by Wendell Cox. High housing prices, he notes, are widely linked to strict regulatory policies, mostly seeking to hamper suburban growth and force development into urban cores. Almost all the US cities with the highest prices — San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego — have enacted these urban containment or compact city strategies, which force people to live in denser, smaller, and more expensive inner-city housing.
Such approaches are widely popular with planners, progressives, and green activists. However, by restricting development on the more affordable suburban fringe, they drive up housing costs across entire metropolitan areas. This has deepened a stark and unprecedented divide between US regions. In much of the country — especially the Midwest, parts of Pennsylvania, and the South — home prices remain affordable, with median prices roughly three times the median income. By contrast, in coastal California and much of the Northeast, that ratio has surged to around nine to one.
All of this has turned housing into a potent political issue. In a Gallup survey last month, Americans ranked housing as their top financial worry behind inflation. In a Harvard poll of 18- to 29-year-olds last year, housing ranked as the third-most important issue overall, after inflation and healthcare. Meanwhile, around 65% of California residents consider housing costs a major concern — an astonishing figure.
Prices also affect levels of homeownership, long a linchpin of middle-class aspiration. January home sales were down 5% from last year’s dismal numbers. Record numbers of first-time buyers are stuck on the sidelines as housing affordability stands at its lowest level in 40 years, and one in three pay over 30% of their income in mortgage or rent.
The young — tomorrow’s voters — are the most directly hit. According to US Census Bureau data, the rate of homeownership among young adults aged 25–34 was 45.4% for Generation X, but dropped to 37% for Millennials. This decline comes despite nearly three in five Millennials viewing homeownership as a core part of the American dream.
Ultimately, the differential in housing will upset America’s long-term political balance. Housing costs are driving young people, immigrants and minorities to Sun-Belt and even Rust-Belt locales, while the Northeastern and West Coast metros continue to lose domestic migrants. Few young people can expect to afford living in California, where the rich now dominate the housing market, and more than a third of all real-estate transactions in recent years topped $1 million.
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 and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
As the Feudal Future podcast marks its fifth anniversary, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky examine how dramatically our society has evolved since they first warned about the emergence of neo-feudalism—a concentration of wealth and power resembling historical feudal systems.
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.
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.
President Trump announced that the federal government would no longer provide financial support to the California High-Speed Rail project, according to the New York Times.
According to Trump, “That train is the worst cost overrun I’ve ever seen,” “It’s, like, totally out of control.” He added: “This government is not going to pay.”
Izzy Gordon, spokesman for Governor Gain Newsom responded: “With 50 major structures built, walking away now as we enter the track-laying phase would be reckless — wasting billions already invested and letting job-killers cede a generational infrastructure advantage to China.”
In fact, the recklessness was California’s alone, which chose to spend billions of money that it did not have, apparently on the assumption that the taxpayers of the other 49 states would have no alternative but to continue funding. The “unused 50 major structures” could ultimately become a memorial to an overly costly project that had been oversold from the start. An appropriate name could be “Stonehenge in the Valley.”
Recently, Unleash Prosperity released my report (“California High-Speed Rail: Still Stuck at the Station”) suggesting that the presently estimated $128 billion ultimate cost to link Los Angeles to San Francisco could double that amount ($250 billion), if the cost escalation of the first third of the project continues. As the state established Peer Review Group has said, so far the work has been in the easy part. The much more complicated segments from Palmdale to Los Angeles
The fault lines in US-Mexico relations have never been more visible. Our expert panel —featuring former CNN journalist Bruno Lopez and economist Alejandro Chaufen— brings decades of experience to unpacking one of North America's most crucial yet strained relationships.
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.
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.
America stands at a political crossroads where old alliances are shifting and economic realities are reshaping party loyalties. The Democratic Party faces a profound identity crisis - pragmatic at the local level where mayors tackle real problems head-on, yet seemingly detached at the national level where ideology often trumps practicality.
Our fascinating conversation with David Gershwin, Democratic strategist, and Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, explores this tension that could determine not just the Democratic Party's future but America's economic direction.
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.
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.
Donald Trump’s tariff blitz is not exactly making friends with long-time allies, economists, or the libertarian, free trade Right. His approach has made him persona non grata at publications such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal. Yet although the president wields the tariff stick like a madman swatting flies, there is more logic to his approach than one might glean from much of the press.
Fundamentally, Trump’s tariff policy is an attempt, albeit crude, to reverse decades of unfair trade relations, most notably with Europe. His focus is to force the EU, whose trade policies he has labelled an “atrocity”, to reform its protectionist system, under which tariffs on US-made cars are by some counts four times higher than the equivalent American tariffs on European cars. The situation is similar in such sectors as food, beverages and other agricultural products. In some areas, American products sold in Europe are frequently taxed at 30 per cent or more.
As the historian Michael Lind has pointed out, tariffs have long been a tool in the arsenal of both advanced and developing countries. And they still are. Today, the EU imposes high tariffs on electric vehicles made in China. Other countries, including rising power India, have levied tariffs of 70 to 100 per cent on electric vehicles from China and elsewhere. Few Canadians recognise that Canada, beneficiary of a $100 billion merchandise trade surplus with the US last year, has been highly protectionist and for a long time. Canada recently levied a 100 per cent tariff on imported Chinese EVs and a 25 per cent surtax on Chinese steel and aluminium.
To deal with Trump’s policies, America’s traditional allies need to recognise that the greatest threat to the West is not American tariffs but China’s massive drive to dominate the market in manufactured goods in virtually every industry. In the US, notes an EPI study, the growth of China’s trade deficit cost roughly 3.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2018.
Until recently, multinational corporations and financial markets have been remarkably untroubled by Beijing’s stated aim by 2050 of becoming the leading global superpower. But those in the public realm have to take a longer range view that recognises that the West’s greatest long-term challenge lies in relentless Chinese mercantilism.
This West’s trade disadvantage with Beijing extends from the most prosaic to the cutting-edge. During the pandemic, the US found itself dependent on China, the source of the affliction, even for the most basic medical supplies. “Why can’t the greatest economy in the history of the world produce swabs, face masks and ventilators in adequate supply?” asked Lawrence Summers, the former head of President Obama’s National Economic Council, on social media on March 21 2020.
America’s inability to produce even basic goods has not fundamentally altered since. The generally anti-Trump media complains how companies cannot even source screws in the United States. Although chief executives and libertarian economists may see this as a reason to keep the floodgates open, a rational person might suspect that an America that cannot produce even such simple goods will not long lead the world.
But Chinese dominance is also spreading to the most critical sectors. In 2023, it consumed roughly half of the world’s steel and emerged as one of the world’s largest automobile producers – electric cars largely powered by coal play a key role. It has also invested heavily to take over the aerospace industry from both Boeing and Europe’s Airbus. It has grown rapidly in sectors like semiconductors, batteries, airplanes, and automotive parts, and now accounts for more than half of all world shipbuilding. Unlike Japan in the 1980s, whose growth threatened American industries, China’s rise also threatens America’s basic ability to produce advanced military goods.
Once this is understood, it seems fairly insane for Europeans and the UK to be criticising the United States while continuing to turn a blind eye to China. Britain’s Keir Starmer’s attempt to cosy up to China in order to “Trump proof” his realm seems the road to ever great irrelevancy, although perhaps his Labour Party can benefit in its drive to curb free speech from the censorship masters in Beijing.
European leaders need to realise that Trump’s desires are not revolutionary, but similar to their own: if you want to do business in our country, create jobs and production here. This is not only reliant on getting key trade partners to reduce their protective barriers but to force companies, like Honda, to scrap plans for shifting production of new models to Mexico and instead make them in Indiana. Both Eli Lilly and chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor have already been persuaded to invest billions in the United States, when their products in the past could easily be shipped in from abroad.
Of course many businesses – notably those with strong Chinese supply links – will be reluctant to accept that the current economic regime is over. But others are now seeking out more domestic suppliers. McKinsey surveyed supply chain executives and found consistent concern that supply chains are too vulnerable to international disruption.
Rather than rant, European, UK and Canadian political leaders need to push for negotiations aimed at equalising tariff barriers and look for ways to build a reinvigorated economic and security alliance. Trump, after all, is a committed dealmaker, and perhaps can be persuaded to ratchet down his demands and give countries, including his own, time to adjust.
Trump will, and rightfully so, work to unravel existing trade barriers, and recalibrate relations by ending nearly 80 years of now unsustainable American economic and security protection. America’s president may be half-mad, but our friends abroad also need to realise that, without a strong tie to America, they would likely be reduced to little more than Chinese vassal states.
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 and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Trump's threatened tariffs against Canada have sparked more than just economic anxiety—they've triggered a profound identity crisis among our northern neighbors. Joining Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are John Kay (Quillette) and Rob Roberts (National Post), who offer razor-sharp insights into how this diplomatic tension is reshaping Canadian self-perception.
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.
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.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has become one of the most controversial initiatives of the Trump administration, but what does it actually represent? We're joined by Shawn Steel, National Committeeman for the Republican National Committee, and Professor Luke Nichter, historian at Chapman University, to explore the deeper meaning behind this government restructuring effort.
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.
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.
Infinite Suburbia is the culmination of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's yearlong study of the future of suburban development. Find out more.
Authored by Aaron Renn, The Urban State of Mind: Meditations on the City is the first Urbanophile e-book, featuring provocative essays on the key issues facing our cities, including innovation, talent attraction and brain drain, global soft power, sustainability, economic development, and localism.
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