For much of the past century, Southern California has been driven by ever increasing population growth. That area has now ended as the region’s demographics stagnate, a trend that, according to the latest Census numbers, is, if anything, accelerating.  read more »

Richard Florida has a new piece over at City Lab analyzing recent data on venture capital from Pitchbook. The conclusion is that venture capital funding is hyper-concentrated, and getting even more so:  read more »

The suburban house is the idealization of the immigrant’s dream—the vassal’s dream of his own castle. Europeans who come here are delighted by our suburbs. Not to live in an apartment! It is a universal aspiration to own your own home. —Los Angeles urbanist Edgardo Contini  read more »

The headlines in 2017 were saturated with stress, ultimately perpetuating the issue by increasing anxiety and fear compounded by loneliness and isolation. The number of Americans with zero close friends, defined as having no one to talk to about ‘important matters,’ has tripled since 1985. Additionally, the General Social Survey found that Millennials, the most connected generation, appeared to rank the highest in loneliness.  read more »

How can Orange County become a better place to live for all of its residents? Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky explore the challenges and solutions in Orange County Focus: Forging Our Common Future, a research brief from Chapman University's Center for Demographics and Policy. Read an excerpt from the report below:  read more »

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released their final 2017 metro area job numbers. It was a pretty good year for job growth in a lot of major metros. Here’s how they fared, ranked by percentage job growth. Job totals are in thousands.  read more »

Whatever his grievous shortcomings, President Trump has succeeded in one thing: smashing the once imposing edifice of neoliberalism. His presidency rejects the neoliberal globalist perspective on trade, immigration and foreign relations, including a penchant for military intervention, that has dominated both parties’ political establishments for well over two decades.  read more »

The new 2017 US Census Bureau metropolitan area population estimates have been published. They show a significant increase in domestic migration away from the largest cities (the major metropolitan areas, with more than 1,000,000 population) toward the metropolitan areas with from 500,000 to 1,000,000 population. The data also shows an acceleration of suburban versus core county population growth within the major metropolitan areas themselves. The data is summarized in the table at the bottom of the article.  read more »

Public Art has been an important part of American public spaces since the 1960s when the National Endowment for the Arts established their first public art program in America’s public spaces. During this inception, public art was a new concept in a time when art was largely relegated to the confines of the museum. The Civil Rights Movement changed the perception of public spaces in America, giving more autonomy to the people to determine how the public space should be used.  read more »

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I don’t believe brain drain is the problem it’s been made out as. Often talent export can actually itself be a form of economic development.

A recent New Yorker profile of the Silicon Valley firm Glassdoor, which allows employees to post reviews of their employer, made this point implicitly in passing. Robert Hohman, the CEO of Glassdoor, is from Akron.  read more »