Geography

This seems about the worst possible month to be suggesting that anybody should try to emulate anything going on in America. The place seems to be going mad in ways no longer funny to laugh at from very far away.

So it’s a bit of a shame that the best lessons on infrastructure financing and affordable housing come from a few places in the United States that have really figured things out. If the exact same lessons had come from Canada, or the UK, or Estonia, Infrastructure New Zealand would have an easier time marketing its latest report.  read more »

Lisbon, Portugal’s capital is located on the wide estuary of the Tagus River, with a bridge modeled after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge connecting the core city to the suburbs to the south. Lisbon also resembles San Francisco in being picturesque, with the urbanization mixed with the complex geography of the coastal waters, dominated by hills.  read more »

The following excerpt is from The American Heartland’s Position In the Innovation Economy, a newly released report written by Ross DeVol, Jonas Crews, and Shelly Wisecarver. Their report highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the American Heartland's position in the 21st century economy.  read more »

I've written quite a bit about segregation and its impact on cities lately, and more specifically on its impact on people of color. I won't link to everything I've done recently but encourage you to scroll through articles here, and on my Forbes site. You'll find a reasonable flavor of the things I've written about segregation's legacy in cities.

But today I wanted to use my own family history to show how it's had a personal and generational impact.  read more »

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is hiring a research associate for their global cities program. If interested, check out the listing.

In 2009 I posted an article that proclaimed Columbus, Ohio “the new Midwestern star,” a prediction which proved prescient. I won’t go too much into performance right now as I’m planning an article on the subject, but just as one quick stat, Columbus has been the fastest growing major Midwest metro in population since 2010 at 9.0%, with a bit of a gap to the #2 performer Minneapolis at 7.3%.  read more »

The passing this week of Jonathan Gold, Los Angeles’s Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic, reminded us of why we have lived in Southern California for more than four decades. When we arrived in L.A. in the 1970s—from New York and Montreal, respectively—the city was known largely for glitter and celebrities but little else.  read more »

Urumqi (alternate spelling “Wulumuqi”) is the most remote large city in the world from a seacoast. Urumqi is approximately 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian Ocean, just south of Dhaka, Bangladesh (Image 1). It is farther from Beijing, China’s national capital than to India’s national capital, Delhi.  read more »

It’s common knowledge that millennials long for "community." What’s less understood is the concrete expression of that longing in cities and suburbs across America, especially now that the older tier of millennials between ages 28 and 34 are buying homes, starting companies, running for office, and throwing around their consumer weight.  read more »

The European Court of Auditors issued a report in late June critical of Europe’s development of high-speed rail. The European Court of Auditors is described on its website as: “the EU's independent external auditor, the European Court of Auditors looks after the interests of EU taxpayers.  read more »

City Journal just ran a very interesting piece on Lagos by Armin Rosen. Lagos is by some estimates Africa’s largest city and is well known as a creative capital. I don’t know anything personally about the city, but found Rosen’s description balanced and fascinating. Here are some excerpts:  read more »