A new class conflict is emerging across the world. You can see its face in the mass protests over COVID-19 restrictions from Paris, Berlin and London to southern California and Melbourne. read more »
Demographics
The COVID Class War: The Obedient Online Educated vs. The IRL Resistance
This Might Be a Good Time for Creative Zoning
No matter what else it may have already caused and/or will continue to cause in the coming future, one thing that we know for sure is that the COVID pandemic has done is alter how people will approach land use planning and development issues in the coming years, possibly even decades. read more »
How the 'Empty Quarter' Became America’s Great Success Story
In 1981, Washington Post journalist Joel Garreau attempted to understand the many subcultures of America by examining in detail the differences between different states. He came away unsatisfied, and the ultimate result of this dissatisfaction was an influential book, The Nine Nations of North America. In it, he ignored these often-arbitrary state boundaries and divided America into nine regional “nations” that he argued corresponded more with cultural, socio-economic and demographic realities. read more »
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Never Going Back
For months, corporate hegemons, real estate brokers and their media acolytes have insisted that a return to “normalcy,” that is, to the office, was imminent. read more »
Amid Airline Re-Set, Ensure We're Flown Into — Not Over
Amid the ups and downs of the post-Covid airline business, one disturbing constant has settled over the ever-changing route maps: In Flyover Country, we’re still in danger of losing many of our aeronautic lifelines to one another and to the rest of the country and the world. Among other effects, countering that problem will be a big boon to private aviation. read more »
Exposure Density, Overcrowding and COVID Death Rates: Update
In their new book, Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and David Cutler characterize COVID and related issues as an “existential threat to the urban world, because the human proximity that enables contagion is the defining characteristic of the city” (see our review, Survival of the City: The Need to Reopen the Metropolitan Frontier (Review). read more »
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Census Data Confirm Migration from Big CIties
Eight of the ten American cities with more than one million people lost population in 2020, according to estimates released by the Census Bureau. Note that these are only estimates; not official 2020 census numbers. read more »
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What Exactly Is Urban?
About a month ago I asked a simple question on Twitter, hoping to get Urbanist Twitter’s consensus opinion. I posted an aerial picture of a residential neighborhood (see above) and asked, “is this urban?” I was quite surprised by the responses. read more »
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The Hidden Truth of Bluelining Versus Redlining a Neighborhood
Redlining and Bluelining Are Detrimental to a Neighborhood, But Bluelining Is Devastating to Low-Income Blacks and Other Groups read more »
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The Fading Family
For millennia the family has stood as the central institution of society—often changing, but always essential. But across the world, from China to North America, and particularly in Europe, family ties are weakening, with the potential to undermine one of the last few precious bits of privacy and intimacy. read more »
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