China: Urbanizing and Moving East: 2010 Census

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The National Bureau of Statistics of China has just released the first results of the 2010 census. The new figures portray a radically reduced population growth rate, rapid urbanization and an unprecedented domination of population growth by the East Coast.  read more »

The Best Cities for Jobs 2011

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These may be far from the best of times, but they are no longer the worst. Last year’s annual “Best Cities for Jobs” list was by far the most dismal since we began compiling our rankings almost five years ago. Between 2009 and 2010, only 13 of 397 metropolitan areas experienced any growth at all. For this year’s list, which measured job growth in the period between January 2010 and January 2011, most of the best-performing areas experienced actual employment increases — even if they were modest.  read more »

2011 How We Pick the Best Cities For Job Growth

The methodology for the 2011 rankings largely corresponds to that used last year, which emphasizes the robustness of a region's growth both recently and over time. It allows the rankings to include all of the metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports monthly employment data. They are derived from three-month rolling averages of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics "state and area" unadjusted employment data reported from November 1999 to January 2011.  read more »

Subjects:

The Public Transport Revolution – Why does it never Arrive?

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Since the oil spike in the early seventies, enthusiasts for public transport have predicted that high prices for petrol would trigger a public transport revolution as people finally broke their “addiction” to the motor car and changed their travel mode to buses and trains.

Since then, price bubbles have increased public transport use, and lowered car miles traveled. But these changes have proved to be short-lived. More drive more.  read more »

How China’s Megacities Have Avoided Problems of Other Developing Cities

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Urbanist media can’t seem to get enough of the megacity these days. Much of the commentary surrounding this topic is disconcertingly celebratory about these leviathans despite such phenomena as overcrowding, high levels of congestion and sprawling slums.  read more »

Divorce and Demographics by State

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While everyone seems to know someone who has been divorced, rates can vary widely by state.  Why?  Do high divorce states have anything in common?  We took a look at some visualizations of state divorce rates against a few other demographic characteristics.

The latest Census data offers up some observations of how divorce varies regionally. The first graph shows 2008/2009 divorce rate against 2009 bachelor’s degree educational attainment.   We average two years of Census divorce rate data to help even out the variance caused by small sample sizes.  read more »

Subjects:

Rethinking Urban Dynamics: Lessons from the Census

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Much has been made of the vaunted “back to the city” movement by “the young and restless,” young professionals, the creative class, empty nesters and others were voting with their feet in favor of cities over suburbs.  Although there were bright spots, the Census 2010 results show that the trend was very overblown, affecting mostly downtown and near downtown areas, while outlying ones bled population.  One culprit for this discrepancy seems to be that the intra-census estimates supplied by the Census Bureau were inflated – in some cases very inflated.  read more »

Diverging Demographics Leads to Fewer Babies in Singapore

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Two interesting statistics were recently released in the same week. Singapore clocked in a population of just over 5 million and a sex ratio of 974 males per 1000 females.  Its neighbour and ally India inched closer to beating China in the population game by notching up 1,210 million people as its head count, along with the more news-worthy sex ratio of 940 females to every 1000 males.  read more »

Washington State's Evolving Demography

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Population change in the state of Washington has relevance to the nation and to other states because it tells us something about market preferences of households versus the orientation of planners (e.g., “smart growth”). It tells us much about gentrification and America’s changing racial and ethnic diversity.  read more »

The Evolving Urban Form: Manila

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The Urban Area: The Manila urban area ranks as the world's fifth largest urban area (area of continuous urban development) with a population of approximately 21,000,000 (Note 1) covering a land area of 550 square miles (1,425 square kilometers). The urban population density sits at approximately 38,000 people per square mile (14,500 per square kilometer).  read more »