As COVID-19’s lasting impacts on where we prefer to live and work become more and more apparent, the importance of suburban and regional renewal becomes more and more important.
With that in mind, The Suburban Alliance has released a 2021 call for action on suburban renewal, summarised in a 3½ minute social media video. It contains some compelling figures on where our capital works priorities have been in the past, and makes the case for ‘flattening the curve” so that high growth but economically disadvantaged suburbs receive at least equal attention to privileged inner city areas in the future.
Click or tap to watch the video below:
The Suburban Alliance is a not-for-profit collaboration of people and businesses who believe that opportunities for greater suburban quality of life, business opportunity and economic expansion could get more attention and support than they currently do. Visit website: suburbanalliance.com.au.
On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Austin Williams. Austin Rhys Williams is course leader/senior lecturer in PG Dip Professional Practice in Architecture at Kingston School of Art; and honorary research fellow at XJTLU University in China.
He is the director of the Future Cities Project, China correspondent for the Architectural Review and has written for a range of publications; from the Times Literary Supplement to Top Gear; from Dezeen to The Economist.
His latest books are "China's Urban Revolution: Understanding Chinese Eco-cities" (Bloomsbury, 2017) and "New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future" (Thames & Hudson, forthcoming, 2019). His previous books include: "The Enemies of Progress", "The Future of Community" and "The Lure of the City". He co-founded the mantownhuman manifesto (featured in Penguin Classics "100 Artists' Manifestos") and the New Narratives initiative. (Kingston)
[2:30] Austin and Joel discuss the differences in urbanism between the West and China.
[13:30] Austin explains China’s vision for the future with artificial intelligence.
[15:30] Marshall, Austin and Joel discuss Jack Ma and independent thought.
[27:04] The episode ends with a discussion of economics, population control and China’s demographics.
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.
Hope you emerged from this crazy winter storm + power/water outage week relatively unscathed. I certainly learned the value of stockpiling water and draining water pipes (esp. with a power outage), and ERCOT learned that it's a bad idea to cut off power to natural gas pumps across the state during a winter storm. I hope they spend a bit of time doing analysis before jumping to expensive solutions like full winterization of all facilities. It's possible that if they had simply mapped natural gas pumps and compressors across the state and treated them as critical non-blackout facilities like hospitals, we might have gotten away with short-duration rolling blackouts that would have been far more manageable (like 2011).
"Solutions will have to be nuanced and incremental. Winterizing all power plants would be unnecessarily expensive, and so would a complete overhaul of Texas' market design, which is partly responsible for consistently low power prices compared with the rest of the country."
And an excellent idea: "One option could be rewarding liquefied natural-gas processing facilities in Texas to both curtail electricity usage and to redirect the feedstock natural gas for electricity rather than for exports."
"to equal the 80 Bcf/d of gas delivered during cold snaps, the U.S. would need an electric grid as large as all existing generation in the country, which is currently about 1.2 terawatts."
Unpopular observation: gas-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs were a critical source of resilience during this never-ending mass power-outage disaster by providing heat and recharging. If we all had electric vehicles, this disaster would have been epically worse. A hard truth.
Tory Gattis is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Center for Opportunity Urbanism and co-authored the original study with noted urbanist Joel Kotkin and others, creating a city philosophy around upward social mobility for all citizens as an alternative to the popular smart growth, new urbanism, and creative class movements. He is also an editor of the Houston Strategies blog.
Housing Industry Organization Chief Economist Tim Reardon has predicted that detached housing production will set an all time record in 2021 in Australia. The demographic shifts resulting from the Covid-19 Pandemic are the root cause. According to Reardon: ““Regional locations in many states are showing a larger increase in activity than capital cities as the population moves away from inner city living.” This mirrors a trend reported in other nations.
On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Charles Blain, Brian Calle, and Cullum Clark to discuss the future of the GOP.
Charles Blain is the president of Urban Reform Institute. Urban Reform Institute (URI, formerly Center for Opportunity Urbanism) is a stand-alone think tank, based in Houston.
Brian Calle is the CEO and publisher of LA weekly. Since 1978, LA Weekly has been decoding Los Angeles for its readers, infiltrating its subcultures, observing and analyzing its shifting rhythms, digging up its unreported stories and confronting the city's political leaders.
Dr. J.H. Cullum Clark is the Director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative where he is responsible for managing various aspects of the new partnership between the Department of Economics and the Bush Institute and leads the Initiative's work on domestic economic policy and economic growth.
[3:42] Joel compares the GOP to France’s right, saying how the GOP is on its way to becoming a voiceless, minority party.
[6:17] Charles dissects the party, explaining how the party has no unifying voice, member accountability, or adherence to principles.
[26:00] Joel speaks about the GOP's racial insensitivity, lack of positive programming, and opposition of big tech.
[29:48] The episode ends with the hosts and speaker’s optimism on rational bipartisan debates in both the Senate and the House.
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.
Books
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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