NewGeography.com blogs

Economic development professionals in Texas will remember this November for a long time as the month saw announcements for three record-breaking, colossal construction projects. It’s fair to call them “Texas-sized.”

First, Texas Instruments (TI) said it will build a $30 billion semiconductor fabrication plant in Sherman, which is about midway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border (an area often referred to as Texoma).

Next, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., announced that it will construct a $17 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, which is near Austin.

Also, Tesla just revealed that its Gigafactory in Austin – where construction and interior finishing work is underway – revealed that its cost is estimated at $1.1 billion.

The announcements totaling $48.1 billion were announced in only an eight-day period, which may be a record in the world of economic development. I can speak only for myself, but I don’t recall anything of this magnitude occurring in such a short time span in any state.

Read the rest of this piece at Spectrum Location Solutions.

Joe Vranich helps businesses make location decisions driven by growth, consolidation, market changes, or a need to relocate to places with more favorable business climates.

populyst is launching a new initiative, together NYC, to crowd-source and to map sentiment across New York City. It is an invitation to users to mark on a map their sentiment at a given location and point in time.

There is a menu of eleven preset sentiments and one that is user defined. A user can sign in as a guest, or can create an account if he/she wishes to track or review their own sentiments over time. Click on this image to open the page.

To view the map and participate in this project, click here.

You are invited to attend an online international Bookshop Barnie with Professor Xing RUAN (based in Shanghai) in conversation with Austin Williams (London).

Professor Xing Ruan is Dean at the School of Design at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and his latest book is "Confucius' Courtyards: Architecture, Philosophy, and the Good Life in China" (to be published soon). The book has been described as “a truly magnificent work of scholarship for the understanding of China.”

If you want to understand Chinese society and civilization, its mindset and morality, this is the book to read.

DATE: Saturday 27th November 2021
TIME: 1pm-2:30pm (UK), 9pm-10:30pm (China), 8am-9:30am (New York)
ALL WELCOME(FREE)
REGISTER AT: Eventbrite

Ontario’s premier Doug Ford indicated strong support for the new 60 kilometer (more than 35 miles) Highway 413 across the northwest suburbs of metropolitan Toronto. The highway would connect Vaughn, in York region with Milton, connective with Highway 401 west of Toronto International Airport. Highway 401, the MacDonald Cartier Freeway is one of the world’s busiest and widest highway, especially as it traverses within the northern city limits of Toronto, with from 12 to 14 lanes (see map at Toronto CTV News).

According to the Toronto Star, Ford “dismissed critics as downtown Toronto ideologues.” Ford told the Star: ““Just sitting there and telling people, ‘hop on your bicycle or get behind a horse and buggy and start driving,’ it doesn’t cut it.” The premier added “That’s the ideology of a lot of people that are from downtown Toronto making their comments about up 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.

On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek, to discuss America's new journalism through digital media.

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More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

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Join the Beyond Feudalism Facebook group.
Learn about Joel's book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism.

About our guest:

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Before that, she was the opinion editor of the Forward, the largest Jewish media outlet in America. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, the New York Review of Books Daily, and other publications. She has appeared numerous times on MSNBC, NBC, the Brian Lehrer Show, NPR, and at other media outlets. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her new book, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy is available on Amazon. Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century―from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession.

About the hosts:

Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, and an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His most recent book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is now available for order.

Marshall Toplansky is a widely published and award-winning marketing professional and successful entrepreneur. He co-founded KPMG’s data & analytics center of excellence and now teaches and consults corporations on their analytics strategies.

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.