Demographics

The Protean Future Of American Cities

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The ongoing Census reveals the continuing evolution of America’s cities from small urban cores to dispersed, multi-polar regions that includes the city’s surrounding areas and suburbs. This is not exactly what most urban pundits, and journalists covering cities, would like to see, but the reality is there for anyone who reads the numbers.  read more »

What India Hands to the World

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Yoga. Mantras. Bollywood. Henna tattoos. Once unique to India, each of these has now become commonplace in households across the globe. As a first generation East Indian American, I've had an opportunity to contrast the world my parents experienced with the one I inhabit. When my parents first settled here in the 1980s Indian cultural influences were not this prominent, but the increases in America and around the globe have been dramatic.  read more »

Subjects:

From the Great Moderation to the Great Stagnation

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For much of the past decade, I was a proponent of the thesis that that the American economy had entered a “great moderation,” where expansions lasted longer and recessions were fewer, shorter and milder. Productivity had seemingly reached a permanently high plateau; inflation seemed tamed. The spreading of financial risk, across institutions and around the world, seemed to have reduced the odds of a crisis.  read more »

Is Nashville the Next Boomtown of the New South?

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I traveled to Nashville for the first time in 2007, spending most of my time in the downtown area. I posted my impressions here, noting the high growth and high ambition level as well as the fantastic freeways, but also the generally unimpressive development and built environment.  read more »

The Evolving Urban Form: The Valley of Mexico

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The last 60 years of urban growth in the Mexico City area should dispel any belief that suburban dispersion is principally an American phenomenon or even limited to the high income world. Over the last 60 years, all of the population growth in what is now called the Valley of Mexico metropolitan area and urban area has occurred outside the urban core (See Map).  read more »

What The Census Tells Us About America’s Future

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With the release of results for over 20 states, the 2010 Census has provided some strong indicators as to the real evolution of the country’s demography. In short, they reveal that Americans are continuing to disperse, becoming more ethnically diverse and leaning toward to what might be called “opportunity” regions.

Below is a summary of the most significant findings to date, followed by an assessment of what this all might mean for the coming decade.

Point One: America is becoming more suburban.  read more »

Census 2010: A Texas Perspective

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If you want to get a glimpse of the future of the U.S., check out Fort Worth, TX. Never mind the cowboy boots, but you might want to practice your Spanish.

Texas is growing explosively and much of that growth is among Latinos.   The latest Census Bureau figures show the Lone Star State grew by 20%, to over 25 million people, recording about a quarter of the nation’s overall growth.  read more »

The Millennial Mosaic

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Esperanza Spalding, winner of the best new artist award at this year’s Grammys, personifies the ethnic trends reshaping America.  She is a fresh-faced 27-year old jazz bassist whose very name portrays her mixed ethnic and racial heritage as the daughter of an African-American father and a Hispanic, Welsh, Native American mother. Spalding first gained her deep interest in music watching French-born Chinese American classical cellist Yo Yo Ma on “Sesame Street,” a TV program that has perhaps contributed to ethnic acculturation in the U.S. as much as any other institution.  read more »

Census 2010: Urbanizing Indiana

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The first Census results for Indiana were recently released, painting a picture of an increasingly metropolitan state.  Indianapolis continues to be the growth champion as its strong economy attracted people from the rest of the state, as well as increasingly diverse populations.  Although  the core of Indianapolis fell well below expectations, its population did not fall like that of Chicago. In a switch from some other regions, the outer suburbs also lagged expectations while inner suburbs boasted a robust performance.  read more »

The Evolving Urban Form: Seoul

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Based upon the preliminary results of the South Korea 2010 census, Seoul has become the world's third largest metropolitan area. The jurisdictions making out the metropolitan area, the provincial level municipality of Seoul (which is the national capital), the province of Gyeonggi and the provincial level municipality of Incheon now have a population of approximately 23.6 million people. This is third only to Tokyo – Yokohama, which has a population of approximately 40 million and Jabotabek (Jakarta), which is approaching 30 million.  read more »