Given its legacy of shrinking, the Rust Belt has issues. The issues arose naturally, and relate to the fact things leave, or that so much has left. Particularly, when things leave, the mind—both the individual and the collective city mind—can get protective and restrictive. Neediness arises. The smell of desperation ensues like a pall that can tend to hang over cities, influencing decision making on all levels.

Enter “brain drain”, or that term coined to refer to the outmigration of an area’s educated citizens, particularly it’s young.  read more »

Michael Peevey, President of the California Public Utilities Commission, is sincere and concerned about CO2 emissions. At a recent presentation at California State University Channel Islands, he spoke about California’s efforts to limit emissions. He mentioned green jobs, but, to his credit, he did not repeat the debunked claim that restricting CO2 emissions will be a net job creator. He also acknowledged that it doesn’t much matter what California does, if China doesn’t change its behavior.  read more »

Washington may be a left coast “blue” state, but the geography of the voting well illustrates the national phenomena of intensifying polarization.  The division may be among individual people,   but also expressed in geographies down to precincts and census tracts. 

The Washington 2012 elections provided ample data to assess this political and geographic divide. I review here the two most polarized races, for president (Obama vs. Romney) and for R74, to reaffirm the right to same sex marriage.    read more »

It's been nearly 20 years since California Gov. Pete Wilson won re-election by tying his campaign to the anti-illegal immigrant measure Proposition 187. Ads featuring grainy images of presumably young Hispanic males crossing the border energized a largely white electorate terrified of being overwhelmed, financially and socially, by the incoming foreign hordes.

The demographic dilemma facing California today might be better illustrated by pictures of aging hippies with gray ponytails, of legions in wheel-chairs, seeking out the best rest home and unemployed young people on the street corner, watching while middle-age families drive away, seeking to fulfill mundane middle-class dreams in other states.  read more »

The Kuala Lumpur region of Malaysia is generally defined by the state of Selangor and two geographical enclaves (the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya), carved from the state. These enclaves are the two seats of the federal government. Kuala Lumpur houses the national parliament and Putrajaya the executive and judicial branches.

Population Growth in the Kuala Lumpur Region

The Kuala Lumpur region had a population of approximately 7.1 million, according to the 2010 census. This includes 1.6 million in the federal territory (core city) of Kuala Lumpur and 5.5 million in the suburbs (which include Putrajaya).  read more »

Technology is reshaping our economic geography, but there’s disagreement as to how. Much of the media and pundits like Richard Florida assert that the tech revolution is bound to be centralized in the dense, often “hip” places where  “smart” people cluster.  read more »

By the time I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1986 California's middle class economy was already being remade by globalization. Globalization's dramatic impact on northern California hit me square in the face the moment I arrived at my first career expo later that year at the Westin Hotel in Santa Clara. There I found myself surrounded by a multitude of H‑1B workers from all over the world, excitedly speaking in a myriad of languages. I was staggered. Born in the U.S.A., I felt like a foreigner in the land of my birth.    read more »

When you think of financial services, one usually looks at iconic downtowns such as New York’s Wall Street, Montgomery Street San Francisco's or Chicago’s LaSalle Street. But since the great financial crisis of 2007-8 the banking business is on the move elsewhere. Over the last five years (2007 to 2012), even as the total number of financial jobs has declined modestly, they have been growing elsewhere.  read more »

California's current economic recovery may be uneven at best, but things certainly look better now than the pits-of-hell period in 2008. A cautiously optimistic New York Times piece proclaimed "signs of resurgence," and there was even heady talk in Sacramento of eventually sighting that rarest of birds, a state budget surplus.  read more »

Despite a corporate sponsor that paid handsomely for the naming rights, Londoners stubbornly refer to our bikesharing system as ‘Boris Bikes’, in a nod to our colourful Mayor, Boris Johnson. But what will we call our new drive-it-yourself taxis? My suggestion: ‘Boris Cabs’ – and they are now a reality here, thanks to Daimler’s car2go service, if you happen to live in one of three small and separate sections of town. But why did a one-way carsharing system have to limp into London, when more than a dozen other cities have welcomed these arrangements with open arms? In the US, car2go first appeared in Austin, Texas, and since then has moved into Washington, D.C, Miami, Portland Oregon, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle. It operates in Canada  read more »