The urban form has shifted throughout history. This has been critical to its success. Today we are on the cusp of another transition, ushered in by new technologies and changing demographics, and accelerated by a devastating pandemic. Although these forces affect all geographies, the best chance of success and growth lies in what we define as The Next American City.  read more »

Important new ground was broken by Judge Clark, Senior Director of and Research at the Cicero Institute in his Breakthrough Institute Journal essay. In “Sprawl is Good: The Environmental Case for Suburbia,“ he topples foundational assumptions underlying the planning battle against urban expansion (the ideological term is “urban sprawl”).  read more »

It may be the least opportune time of the year to bring it up, but climate change is something we in Flyover Country are finally reckoning with. And even as the thermometer this week plunges to its lowest levels of the season in much of the heartland, longer-term forces are going to prevail on the issue of our climate, just as spring follows winter.  read more »

With the seeming deconstruction of the Biden Administration proceeding at a rapid clip, many on the right hope for an end to the conscious stoking of class resentments that has characterized progressive politics.  read more »

Innovation does not occur in a vacuum, but rather through cooperation. This explains in part why innovation activities tend to be focused on specific regions. One such region is Stockholm, which has served as home for globally successful enterprises in different sectors, such as fintech, environmental technology, and communication.  read more »

We bemoan autocracies in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and China but largely ignore the more subtle authoritarian trend in the West. Don’t expect a crudely effective dictatorship out of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: we may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the nosiest of dictatorships.  read more »

For decades, Highland Park, a wealthy older suburb two miles from downtown Dallas, homes have been torn down, however, this year this activity has accelerated. Perhaps new residents --- the great influx of home buyers from California to Dallas has exacerbated some problems, with the most troubling being the escalation of Highland Park homes in Dallas being torn down. It is not just the raw numbers of people moving to Dallas. Usually, corporate relocations move hundreds of middle level employees and a few executives.  read more »

Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.  read more »

American mythology promises upward mobility, and college can provide an important first step up the class ladder. With the rise of the “knowledge economy” and the decline of industrial jobs and unions, some insisted that education is the answer to economic displacement. If you can’t earn a stable, living wage as a steelworker, go to college and become a nurse or a computer programmer. And if you didn’t make that choice, it’s your own fault that you’re struggling. After all, college was affordable, accessible, and varied.  read more »

Some horrified conservatives dismiss California as the progressive dystopia, bound for bankruptcy and, let’s hope, growing irrelevance.  read more »