In case it has been a while since you have ridden a bicycle around Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens — as I have in recent weeks — here is a shortlist of some developments around New York City: midtown sidewalks are overflowing with tourists and too narrow for the pedestrian flow (especially around the many Elmos posing in Times Square); the South Bronx, while still very poor, has an emerging middle class; cruise ships dock in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the same piers that were once the provenance of gangland; potholes and deteriorating asphalt are everywhere, despite Mayor Michael Blo  read more »

The term 'walking away from the property' usually refers to owners who leave a home when they can't make the mortgage payments. In Youngstown, Ohio, it may gain a new meaning: to describe banks that abandon a vacant property in foreclosure, and leave neighbors to cope with the blight. Now banks that walk away from their properties are being reigned in by a local community organization.  read more »

With the social media frenzy at a fever pitch, people may be excused for thinking that Silicon Valley is still the main engine for growth in the technology sector. But a close look at employment data over time shows that tech jobs are dispersing beyond the Valley and its much-celebrated urban annex of San Francisco.  read more »

Not long ago there were pretty clear boundaries between the personal sphere and the commercial one, as well as more clear boundaries between public and private space.  read more »

Economist Colm McCarthy says that urban containment policy played a major role in the formation of the housing bubble. In a commentary in the Sunday Independent, Ireland’s leading weekend newspaper, McCarthy relates how urban planning regulations led to higher house prices in the Dublin area (Note 1).  read more »

The public stock offering by Twitter reflects not only the current bubble in social media stocks, but also the continuing shift in both economic and political power away from Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area, home to less than one in five state residents. Not since the late 19th century, when San Francisco and its environs dominated the state, has influence been so lopsidedly concentrated in just one region.  read more »

Silicon Valley has been well recognized as the nation’s hub of technology, having easily surpassed both Southern California and Massachusetts, but it’s now Seattle that may emerge as its greatest rival. Home to tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon, Seattle has attracted creative and entrepreneurial talent, which has been the foundation to its low unemployment rate of 5.9% and continuous economic growth.  read more »

Getting meat and potatoes from the farm to the table depends upon a smooth, even flow. The smaller farmers' markets are mostly absent in the city these days, with a few vestigial exceptions: Reading Market in Philadelphia, Pike Place in Seattle, and Greenmarket in Manhattan, to name a few. Now, East End Market on Corrine Drive in Orlando has taken its place alongside these venerable exchanges.  read more »

Three decades ago, the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) at Texas A&M University began a ground-breaking project to quantify traffic congestion levels in the larger urban areas of the United States. The Urban Mobility Report project was begun under Tim Lomax and David Shrank, who have led the project over the first 30 annual editions.  read more »

Jerry Brown is supposed to be a different kind of politician: well informed, smart, slick, and skilled.  While he has had some missteps, he's always bounced back.  His savvy smarts have allowed him to have a fantastically successful career while generally avoiding the egregious dishonesty that characterizes so many political practitioners.  read more »