Last month I visited a small town in southern Mexico. It is a quiet and modestly prosperous place. Outside some of the homes are older Suburbans, Jeeps and Explorers; the license plates show that their owners have recently returned from the US, driven out by the collapsing economy and heightened nativist anxieties. Almost every family, it seems, has some member who has spent time up north; only a very few of them are still hanging on through the recession. read more »
Suburbs
Rethinking Risk During a Financial Crisis: Learning from Mexico
Euroburbia: A Personal View
The image of the European city as a tourist’s paradise of charming inner-city neighborhoods interconnected by high-speed rail networks is not entirely false, but it does not give the full picture of how most Europeans live. Contrary to the mythology embraced by romantics among planners and ‘green’ politicians, urban areas of Europe sprawl just as much as any American or Western city. read more »
Can Millennials Turn around the Housing Bust?
Many of the nation’s youth (and a few of their elders) are expecting a magical turnaround of America’s economic fortunes as soon as their candidate for President, Barack Obama, is sworn in on January 20th 2009. But the Millennial Generation, born between 1982 and 2003, may be more the source of the country’s economic salvation as any initiative the new President might propose.
Millennials are the largest generation in American history, more than 91 million strong. They are coming of age just in time to join the workforce, enter the housing market, stabilize home prices, and buy the nation's expanding inventory of durable goods to furnish their new homes. read more »
The Housing Bubble and the Boomer Generation
Much of the commentary on the current economic crisis has focused on symptoms. Sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps and the loosening of financial regulations are not the root cause of the financial crisis. They are symptoms of what has recently become a surprisingly widespread belief that individuals, families and even entire nations could live indefinitely beyond their means.
The crisis has reminded everyone that, in the end, market fundamentals like supply and demand still matter and that ignoring traditional virtues like thrift and long-term planning can lead to grief. But what does this have to do with boomers? read more »
Redrawing the Electoral Map? Not so fast.
With Barack Obama’s historic presidential win there has been much celebratory talk about redrawing the electoral map. Obama himself boasted that he was the only Democratic candidate who could accomplish this feat.
However, actual voting results suggest the map only shifted slightly at the margins from the 2000 and 2004 elections and that our geographic voting patterns may be more durable than we think. Here is a comparison of the famous red-blue divide: read more »
- Login to post comments
Michigration: It's Not About Out-migration in Michigan
Pertaining to brain drain hype, Michigan has no equal. So profound is the out-migration that a local broadcasting network coined a term: Michigration. This was in January of 2008. I did a little digging and discovered the fuel for the story was a United Van Lines study about Michigan’s net loss of residents.
Net population loss is often confused with emigration. Upstate New York, another brain drain case for a future article, is no exception. The Federal Reserve Bank branch in Buffalo issued a report that tried to clear up the confusion, explicitly stating the challenge is attracting more people instead of the assumed issue of retention. read more »
California’s Inland Empire: Is There Hope in the Heart of Darkness?
Few areas in America have experienced a more dramatic change in fortunes as extreme as Southern California’s Inland Empire. From 1990-2008, the Inland Empire (Riverside & San Bernardino counties) has been California’s strongest job generator creating 20.1% of its employment growth. The area also consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest growing large metropolitan areas. However in 2008, the mortgage debacle has sent this area, which had not seen year-over-year job losses in over four decades, into a steep downturn. read more »
Island of Broken Dreams
A The New York Times editorial wonders why foreclosure rates are so high in the two Long Island counties it rightly calls the “birthplace of the suburban American Dream.” After all, the area has “a relative lack of room to sprawl.” which in Times-speak should be a good thing, since “sprawl” is by definition both bad and doomed.
Yet it is precisely the constraints on new housing that has served as a principal cause for Long Island problems. read more »
The Geography of Change: Election 2008
As an old radical Democrat, I remained fearful that this fall would see another 2000 and 2004. But instead there was a massive shift of perhaps 10 million votes, or about 7 percent to the Democratic side. read more »
Of Houses, Castles and the Universal Dream
As I sit here in Beijing Capital International Airport waiting for a flight to Taiyuan, I realize something universal about people. Whether in the suburbs of Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing or even in the historical accident of Hong Kong, some of the most beautiful single-family detached housing in the world is here. It is not extensive, because it is not affordable to the great majority of Chinese. read more »