Demographics

In defiance of the conventional wisdom in the national media and among most planning professionals, Americans continue not only to prefer, but to move into single family detached houses. Data from the 2010 American Community Survey indicates that such housing attracted 79.2% of the new households in the 51 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) over the past decade.  read more »

2011 brought us the Arab Spring, a year of protests, turmoil, and revolution. 2012 will usher in the American Winter, a new era of withdrawal and separation for America and the Middle East. Contrary to conventional wisdom, America is poised to step back from the dominant role it has played in the Middle East since 1948.

The author has traveled to the Middle East for more than two decades during which time there was little change among the dictators, strongmen and mullahs that ruled the desert lands.  read more »

The world’s population recently passed the 7 billion mark, and, of course, the news was greeted with hysteria and consternation in the media. “It’s not hard to be alarmed,” intoned National Geographic. “We should all be afraid, very afraid,” warned the Guardian.  read more »

As we indicated in the last article, solo automobile commuting reached an all time record in the United States in 2010, increasing by 7.8 million commuters. At the same time, huge losses were sustained by carpooling, while the largest gain was in working at home, which includes telecommuting. Transit and bicycling also added commuters.  This continues many of the basic trends toward more personalized employment access that we have seen since 1960.  read more »

Among the world’s major advanced countries, the United States remains a demographic outlier, with a comparatively youthful and growing population. This provides an unusual opportunity for America’s resurgence over the next several decades, as population growth elsewhere slows dramatically, and even declines dramatically, in a host of important countries.  read more »

2010 was the 100th anniversary of the start of the “Great Migration” of the “Negro” population to northern cities from the mainly rural South. The midway point occurred in 1960 when black urban population was beginning to peak.     read more »

Despite higher prices and huge media hype over shifts to public transit, the big surprise out of the 2010 American Community Survey has been the continued growth over the last decade in driving alone to work. Between 2000 and 2010, driving alone to work increased by 7.8 million out of a total of 8.7 million increase in total jobs. As a result, this use of this mode reached 76.5% of the nation's workers, up from 75.6% in 2000. This is the largest decadal share of commuting ever achieved for this mode of transport.  read more »

On a Saturday afternoon at The Bund, Xiao Ming (or “Little Ming”) clings tightly onto the hands of his paternal grandparents. His maternal grandparents walk slightly ahead, clearing a path for him in the midst of all the buzz and traffic. Retracing the imprints of their imaginary footsteps, Xiao Ming takes his first tentative steps as a three year old in town for the first time. Slightly behind him, the watchful eyes and ready hands of his own parents spur him on. 1  read more »

Observers and advocates on Long Island — New York's Nassau and Suffolk counties — have repeatedly used age group population estimates to bolster land use policies based on their preferred narrative. The assumption? Young adults are moving away from the region in large numbers due to the high cost of living, particularly housing prices. So, the story goes, the suburban pattern must be broken, and small, high density housing units must replace detached, single-family homes as the dominant urban form if young adults are to be retained.  read more »

Chan Koonchung’s chilling science fiction novel The Fat Years — already an underground sensation in China — will be published in the U.S. January 2012. The book, first published in Hong Kong in 2009, is partly so chilling because it reveals a scenario that is all too plausible. Set in 2013, it takes place after a second financial crisis  (euros, anyone?) that all but destroys the Anglo-American economies and ushers in “China’s golden age of ascendancy.”

The nation that leads the world in The Fat Years is less bleakly dystopian than the Stalinist state portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 or the biologically controlled society of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Yet it is supremely authoritarian — harassing and even executing the rare dissident and putting drugs in the water supply to inflate a sense of well-being among the masses.  read more »