NewGeography.com blogs

On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Jill Stewart, organizational and political strategist, and Steve PonTell, a leading voice on community development, housing affordability and neighborhood transformation, to discuss the truth behind affordable housing.

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

Watch the Video

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

About our guests:

Jill Stewart was the Managing Editor at LA Weekly and laweekly.com. At LA Weekly, she oversaw a team of print and digital journalists who pursue the newspaper's brand of digital hyper-localism and analytical, print journalism. She also oversaw the newspaper's video team and video productions.

Steve PonTell is the Chief Executive Officer and President of National CORE. In 1996, Steve founded the La Jolla Institute, a California-based nonprofit think tank that advances a better understanding of the critical elements necessary for both communities and corporations to achieve sustainable economic competitiveness. He is a nationally recognized authority on community development and creating forward-thinking organizations to maximize evolving market environments. Steve has a Bachelor of Science from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo in City and Regional Planning and an EMBA from Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Business.

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.

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.