New York

Why New York's Success Matters to the Whole Country

Samuel J Abrams — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Bret Stephens recently argued that if Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor of New York City, Republicans should welcome it. A Mamdani victory, he suggests, would make Democrats unelectable by exposing their radicalism and disconnect from ordinary Americans. It’s a tempting thought; but it’s dangerous.

New York isn’t just another city—it’s a global hub of culture, commerce, and creativity. To treat its decline as a political opportunity is to forget what it contributes to America’s economy and soul. A Mamdani administration wouldn’t just misgovern; it would fracture the civic ecosystem that allows New York to thrive—and in doing so, undermine a cornerstone of American dynamism.

New York has long drawn ambitious people from around the world—those who want to build, connect, and create. Its uniqueness lies not in its skyline, but in its density of networks: artists and bankers, coders and lawyers, chefs and marketers—all colliding in shared space. That proximity fuels knowledge spillover: ideas cross-pollinate, accelerate, and scale.

It’s no accident that Hamilton emerged here, where history and ambition coexist. Nor is it a coincidence that fashion, finance, and publishing still call this city home. Cities like Austin or Nashville are vital, but only New York fuses culture and commerce at such scale and speed.

This isn’t just economics. It’s about values. The city’s animating ethos has always been meritocratic: come here, work hard, and you can make it—regardless of who your parents were. It’s noisy, imperfect, and expensive, but also one of the last places where talent still beats pedigree.

That ethic is under threat. Mamdani and others like him don’t just challenge policies — they reject the premise of New York’s success. His campaign doesn’t merely push for more services or taxes. It frames the city, and the country, as morally bankrupt. In his view, capitalism isn’t to be refined — it’s to be dismantled. Institutions aren’t flawed — they’re irredeemable. The goal isn’t to expand opportunity but to seize and redistribute power.

This isn’t a nostalgic plea for 1990s Giuliani-era New York. Nor is it an endorsement of Wall Street or real estate magnates. New York has always needed reform — on housing, policing, education, and more. But Mamdani-style governance isn’t reform. It’s reaction; it’s grievance over growth, ideology over innovation, and a vision of America defined more by its sins than its promise.

Read the rest of this piece at AEI.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Photo: Empire State Building, NYC - by Sam Valadi, via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

More on Cities and Distressed Neighborhoods

Pete Saunders — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

It’s time for me to follow up on the post I wrote ten days ago in response to fellow planner and Substacker Bill Fulton’s "garlic knot" cities concept.

Here’s a quick summary. Fulton notes in his article that there are metro areas across the country anchored by core cities that have solid and successful downtowns surrounded by quickly rising close-to-downtown neighborhoods and growing suburban areas further out. However, many have struggling neighborhoods in between the downtown and suburbs, either awaiting the boom that revitalized downtown or becoming recognized as a great alternative to suburbia. Here’s how he put it, after being reminded of this while spending time in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor:

“Not all of Baltimore, of course, is like this. Like many older rust belt cities that have lost population – Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland – the suburbs are still growing and the center is getting very strong, but the old city neighborhoods are in rough shape. A mile away from where I was enjoying a high-amenity experience, people are trapped in neighborhoods of extreme poverty.

We used to call places like Baltimore and Detroit “donut cities,’ because there was nothing left in the center. But after decades of both public and private revitalization efforts, they’re not really donuts anymore. Some time ago, the Christian urbanist (no, that’s not an oxymoron) Aaron Renn called them “The New Donut,” but that term doesn’t quite fit either.

Instead, I’d call them Garlic Knot Cities – very dense and satisfying in the center, but the center is small and doesn’t have much of substance surrounding it.”

It’s an astute observation, and one I’ve noted as well (without any cool name for it). I think it stands out as one of the most pressing issues of urban planning, policy and governance today, yet it’s almost never framed in this way. There are loud voices in cities advocating for new housing, so housing becomes more affordable. Meanwhile, the machinery that has supported the growth of suburbia continues to build more on the periphery of metro areas. Sun Belt metros, particularly in Texas and Florida, remain locked in on the suburban model. The middle neighborhoods, unfortunately, get left out of the discussion.

Why is this? Mostly because that’s where a significant chunk of urban distress is housed in American cities. These are the areas noted for high crime, poor quality schools, abandoned or obsolete housing, limited access, lacking in amenities, few job opportunities and other ills that plague cities. Residents of these neighborhoods are often looking for the kind of substantial public investment that turned downtowns around, or the private investment that boosted neighborhoods that were once very similar to them into attractive hip hotspots.

But these neighborhoods inhabit a different space than the revitalized downtown and the still-growing suburbs. Back when the term “donut cities” did make sense, cities realized the importance of strengthening the center. In came the new stadiums, mixed-use developments, institutional expansions, and a new commercial ecosystem to support them. And it worked. As I mentioned earlier, the suburban model keeps chugging along, even in weak metro economies. Without the appeal of being a metro area’s showroom to the world, or a metro area’s next shiny new thing, those in between continue to lag.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: A residential street view of a neighborhood in South Dallas. Few people associate neighborhoods like this with Dallas, choosing to focus on its revitalizing interior or booming outskirts. But neighborhoods like this exist there, and a big part of the Metroplex’s success is hiding this view from outsiders. Source: google maps.

Donohue's and the Soul of the City

Samuel J Abrams — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

From the outside, Donohue’s Steak House looks like it belongs to another era—and maybe that’s part of its charm. Nestled on Lexington Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, its faded green awning and dated décor stand in quiet contrast to the sleek storefronts and chain eateries that now dominate the neighborhood. Donohue’s doesn’t try to impress. In fact, it looks slightly out of place.

But step inside, and something different unfolds.

There’s a hum to the room: clinking glasses, laughter from regulars, waitstaff who know your drink before you sit down. It’s not trendy or curated—it’s lived-in. And it’s always full. Donohue’s doesn’t just serve steak—it serves memory, comfort, and the rare feeling of being known in a city that too often insists on anonymity.

I’ve eaten at Donohue’s many times over the years. It’s an authentic third place—not home, not work, but the vital space where community lives. Donohue’s earned that role through consistency and care. The food is solid. The atmosphere is sincere. And if you show up enough, someone nods in recognition. A few visits later, you’re greeted by name. Just like that, a restaurant becomes a home base.

That’s what’s at stake now. After 75 years, Donohue’s is considering closing when its lease ends in 2026. Owner Maureen Donohue-Peters recently opened a second location in Westhampton Beach and is “pondering” whether the original spot will remain open.

She’s candid about the reasons. One of them is crime. A rise in burglaries and break-ins in the neighborhood has shaken her confidence and sense of safety. When a multigenerational business owner begins to fear for the well-being of her staff and space, it’s not just a personal concern—it’s a civic failure.

If New York City wants institutions like Donohue’s to survive, it has to make safety a real priority, not just a talking point.

That challenge sits alongside another: the slow grind of economic and cultural pressure that makes it harder for legacy businesses to stay afloat. Even after surviving real estate booms, blackouts, and a pandemic, Donohue’s may not outlast the next lease negotiation. And that should be a wake-up call.

Because Donohue’s isn’t just a steakhouse. It’s an anchor. A space of belonging in a city that can feel transactional and cold. These are the places that sustain a city’s soul—not just its economy. They are where friendships form, loneliness is softened, and civic trust is built, quietly, over years.

You don’t legislate a third place into existence. You nurture it. You protect it. You ensure it isn’t priced out, pushed out—or left vulnerable to crime and disorder.

New York has long celebrated small businesses and neighborhood institutions in rhetoric, but too often fails them in practice. When a place like Donohue’s begins to consider closure—not for lack of customers or community, but because the city around it no longer feels safe or supportive—it’s time to reexamine our priorities.

Read the rest of this piece at AEI.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Photo: Donohue's Steak House on Lexington Ave., NYC - by Jazz Guy, via Flickr underCC 2.0 License.

Under Zohran Mamdani, the Jewish Exodus from New York Likely to Accelerate

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Zohran Mamdani may represent the future of New York, but only by destroying the secrets of its past success. The city, even under the quasi-socialist mayor Fiorello La Guardia, has from its Dutch days been a fundamentally capitalist enterprise. It is the search for success, often by less than respectable means, which led millions – including the ancestors of Donald Trump – to Gotham.

Mamdani calls himself a democratic socialist. The party’s platform seeks “the abolition of capitalism” and the “social ownership of all major industry and infrastructure”. It goes further than the conventional Leftism of New York, which was social democratic, but strongly patriotic and interested in a stronger economy. The old-fashioned New York Left fought for civil rights, but also for equal treatment and greater opportunity. It would no more talk about taxing “whiter” areas, as Mamdani’s campaign platform recently did, than embrace defunding the police, which he formerly espoused.

To be sure, the exodus that will be most followed in the media will be that of the ultra-wealthy. Like London, New York, even as it has lost its middle orders, continues to attract the rich, at least part-time. Yet however much they love the opera, the fashion or Broadway, the ultra-wealthy cherish their riches even more.

This process appears already to have started. Between 2018 and 2022 over hundred thousand taxpayers left for Florida, draining an estimated $14 billion from the city’s coffers. Mamdani’s election would be a boon for places like Palm Beach, Austin and Dallas, which is building a stock exchange to rival Wall Street. Eric Johnson, Dallas’s mayor, has suggested that Mamdani’s election could increase his own city’s appeal among “rattled” business people fearful of plans to tax them at much higher rates in New York.

But the larger threat perhaps lies in the loss of the city’s middle class. Pummelled by high taxes, a weak economy, street disorder and miserable education, the city’s long-established minority groups – Italians, Irish, Jews, African Americans, Puerto Ricans – have been heading for the exits for years. This trend was joined by younger people, particularly of marriage age, and accelerated during the pandemic.

Left behind are the most recent immigrants, largely from developing countries and many of them Muslim. But Mamdani’s true base lies basically with affluent, young, childless, single professionals (a majority of adult Manhattanites have never been married). Their unifying principle is rent control and staying true, like Mamdani, to their college indoctrination.

This new political nexus between recent migrants and hipsters – despite often vast cultural divides – should be familiar to residents of Paris, London or Toronto, and is also increasingly common in Los Angeles and Chicago. To trumpeters of the Left, like The Guardian, this could be the “roadmap” that leads Democrats back to power. Mamdani is not only good for America, Salon suggests, but for “the world”.
He seems unlikely, however, to be good for New York City’s Jewish community. When I was growing up, the city was home to roughly two million Jews, one in four New Yorkers. Today it is down to one million, just slightly above the almost 800,000 Muslims estimated to be in the city according to a 2016 study (the figure is likely to have risen since). Jews are still a part of the mosaic but a clearly shrinking one. They will surely feel ever more uncomfortable with a mayor who reacted to the October 7 pogrom by criticising the Israeli response and who has threatened to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he bothers to come to the largest diaspora city.

Increasingly, Jews are finding better and safer homes elsewhere. Many have moved to the American South, long considered a difficult terrain for non-Christians. Florida’s Jewish population, barely 100,000 in 1960, now stands at over 670,000. The Jewish community in Houston grew by approximately 50 per cent between 1986 and 2016. The Jewish population in Atlanta has also grown strongly to well over 100,000. In 1930, 60 per cent of American Jews lived in the Northeast to today’s 40 per cent. The percentage of American Jews who live in the South has grown from 9 per cent in 1960 to 22 per cent today.

This geographic sea change can be seen on college campus communities, as well. The first and third largest Jewish student populations in the United States today are the University of Florida and Central Florida University. According to a Brandeis study, southern schools tend to be less intolerant of Jews.

There still remains a chance that Eric Adams, the scandal-plagued current Mayor of New York, might win as an independent. But New Yorkers need to realise that Mamdani and his brand of hipster socialism represents a rejection of the entrepreneurial, tolerant and profoundly American nature of the city.

This piece first appeared at: Telegraph.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo credit: Eden, Janine and Jim, via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

Homes for Hipsters

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

More than his good looks, charm and great social-media game, the biggest reason that Zohran Mamdani may become New York’s next mayor grows from his focus on the city’s affordability crisis, most of which is tied to high housing prices.

Mamdani’s ‘cost of living’ campaign – offering rent control, free buses, childcare and city-owned supermarkets – seems to some leftist pundits a potential road back to power, under the guise of the burgeoning YIMBY (‘yes in my backyard’) movement that seeks to lower rental prices through massive housing construction.

Although Mamdani claims his focus on affordability appeals to working-class voters who shifted to Donald Trump, his core constituency lies elsewhere – with relatively affluent, young, single and childless professionals. For them, rent control is a true blessing, although they may not need free buses or want city-financed grocery stores, unless they resemble Whole Foods.

Housing, of course, is not just a New York issue. It also has a particular resonance for younger Americans. A Harvard poll of 18- to 29-year-olds this year ranked housing as the third-most-important issue overall, after inflation and healthcare. The educated hipster class – Mamdani’s base – understandably worries about the fact that in New York, you need a $135,000-a-year salary to afford a decent place, without it eating up most of your paycheque.

On a national basis, Mamdani’s win could prove a critical boost to the YIMBYs. From their origins in California, they have always been an odd agglomeration, originally financed by Bay Area tech and real-estate elites, while also embraced by more predictable leftist advocates of rent control, heavy subsidies and public housing. As YIMBY policies – like rezoning and densification – have either failed to solve the problem, or failed to gain traction with the public, more draconian socialist approaches seem to be gaining currency.

The YIMBYs are at least right about one thing: the lack of new housing is a profound national failure. Homebuilders constructed a million fewer homes – including units – in 2024 than in 1972, when there were 130 million fewer Americans. One estimate puts the US housing market short by an estimated 4.5 million homes.

But if YIMBYs have diagnosed a key problem, their solutions – wherever imposed – have tended to make things worse. High-density development, often seen as the alternative to urban sprawl, does not solve the problem of higher urban land costs and higher construction fees.

Read the rest of this piece at: Spiked.

Photo credit: Affordable housing construction (2015) in Prospect Height, NYC, by Billie Grace Ward, via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

Zohran Mamdani’s Progressive Intifada will be a Disaster for New York

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 20:52:05 -0400

Whoever is elected New York City mayor in November, Zohran Mamdani’s impressive win this week in the Democratic mayoral primary marks a breaking point in the party, the city and US society as a whole.

New York, where my family settled 120 years ago, is special. It is America’s capital of intellect, art and, most importantly, capitalism. New York’s financial elite have largely tolerated the ‘progressive’ excesses of the Democrats in recent years, but the prospect of a self-described ‘socialist’ running the city may be a bridge too far. We can expect them to renounce the Democrats altogether or join the mass migration south.

Yet while the financial elites might be reeling from the result, Mamdani’s win was no working-class uprising or revolt of the lower orders. His main rival, former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo, did best in heavily black and ethnic white enclaves, many of them quasi-suburban, as well as some elite precincts in Manhattan. Mamdani won most convincingly in the far-from-impoverished hipster belts of Brooklyn, Queens, the Upper East Side and Lower Manhattan. These precincts now dominate a Democratic Party once driven by white ethnics and working-class African Americans.

The key element here is the younger, mostly white, economically marginalised new proletariat – sometimes called the ‘precariat’. They are most lured by Mamdani’s propositions like frozen rents, free buses and childcare – all funded by higher taxes on the wealthy. Their angst reflects the realities of today’s New York, which works for the wealthy elites but suffers very high levels of inequality. Job growth has been weak and concentrated in low-wage sectors like hospitality and tourism. While incomes for most have stagnated, housing costs have not – rising to record levels this year.

The New York these young people have inherited is no longer the epicentre of economic opportunity. It flourishes largely as a hub for trustafarians, top-tier professionals, globe-trotting elites and cultural creators. While New York’s overall population has declined, the number of ultra-wealthy residents has continued to grow. There’s nothing like the job prospects that earlier generations of New Yorkers had – neither in manufacturing nor in business or financial services.

Read the rest of this piece at: Spiked.

Photo credit: Bluesky, Zohran's profile.

Sheds and Living Life On the Street

Samuel J Abrams — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 20:28:38 -0500

I had the privilege of seeing the gorgeous photography show Out on the Street: The Dining Sheds & Empty Streets of New York, 2020-2024, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The show showcased the work of Dutch photographer Wijnanda Deroo, who wandered New York City for four years, taking close to 400 vibrant photographs of dining sheds built during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheds were ubiquitous across the city; they were unique and often reflected both the culture of the restaurants and the communities in which they were embedded. Some structures were “simple lean-tos banged together out of a few hundred dollars’ worth of lumber to small, lovingly detailed odes to verdigris Beaux-Arts winter gardens, sleek Streamline Moderne luncheonettes and sunset-pink Old Havana arcades.”

The dining sheds are only a memory as the city mandated their demolition and removal by the end of 2024 for a host of reasons, including noise, safety, and issues with mobility. While it appears that New York has an expensive and limited plan to allow for fairly uncreative, sterile outdoor sheds to return for specific periods of time once again, it is unlikely many sheds will re-appear due to the proposed regulations and costs.

The sheds were not loved by many; as the New York Times notes, “to some urbanists, they were a bold experiment in rethinking public space. To others, they were an eyesore. Restaurateurs saw them as an economic lifeline. Opponents saw a land grab.” However, their impact was significant. They were “structures that so completely changed the appearance of our city for four brief years.”

With the pandemic behind us, Deroo’s photographs are a reminder of what is common in other cities around the world but absent in New York—life lived on the street in the company of others. Instead of making outdoor dining a challenge, the city should incentivize ways to make the streets of New York more friendly to pedestrians. The appetite is there. Congestion pricing took effect earlier this year, and there are plans to help Fifth Avenue become more like Paris’s Champs-Elyséss.

When Americans travel abroad to popular environs in Europe, many feel a connection to their surroundings because the people in cafes, bars, and restaurants pour outside onto the sidewalks throughout the day. Throughout Europe, visitors will find people are still outside and enjoying the company of others even in the cold and rain; this is so entrenched in French culture that you will see Parisians in heavy coats and hats sitting outside just to watch and be with others. The excitement and the energy of being around others is tangible, and seeing part of life lived in public and on the sidewalk is something many, if not most, Americans will never regularly experience.

Café culture in Europe is a choice; so is how we as Americans opt to interact in the public sphere. We need to think more seriously about our spatial choices and decide if our preferences reflect what we want as a society. We shape our cities and then our cities shape us through how we build and zone which in turn helps structure how we engage with others be it through texting and apps remotely or in person, in a café surrounded by others.

Roughly four years ago, my family and I returned to Manhattan in the winter of 2021, having left during the pandemic. Upon our return, sheds and outdoor spaces of congregation were everywhere. Our stretch of First Avenue in midtown east was incredible; despite the frigid temperatures and some tough days, the stretch of blocks from the upper 40s through the 50s was alive and exciting. People were distanced but socializing throughout the day, taking advantage of the spaces to gather, socialize, and simply be in the public sphere. Today, the temperatures are as cold, but First Avenue is nothing like what it was; the same area is desolate, uninviting, and empty. The sheds and spaces to gather are long gone, and the residential area of midtown east toward the river feels like a shell of its former pandemic self.

If New York City wants to improve safety, fight rising trends of loneliness and isolation, create spaces of shared interest, spark and foster connections, and help bring life back to neighborhoods that lost businesses during the pandemic shutdowns, the city should incentivize social and connective spaces like the restaurant sheds and public gathering spaces created during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have their flaws, but the sheds can dynamically transform streets and communities and provide spaces that foster a fundamental human need: connection with others. New York should help provide businesses with the incentives to rebuild sheds and other gathering spaces; by doing this, the city will help businesses thrive and promote social capital and architectural creativity along the way.

This piece first appeared at AEI.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Photo: 2021 outdoor dining sheds, 9th Ave. NYC - by Brecht Bug, via Flickr underCC 2.0 License.

Midwestern Provincialism Is A Thing

Pete Saunders — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:28:58 -0500

Yesterday, I conducted a poll on X to ask people what would have to change in large Midwestern metros for non-Midwesterners to consider moving here. The poll was revealing.

I introduced three options to vote for – a strong economic climate; better weather, and lower crime – and a fourth catch-all option for other positions. I went into this thinking the “better economy” option would win, and it did. Complaints about the Midwest’s cold and snow frequently show up as reasons to avoid the Midwest, and that view finished in a strong second. Based on the negative press coverage that cities like Chicago receive on violent crime, I thought “much lower crime” would rank highly, but it did not.

The “all/other” option, however, had a surprise, to me. It largely had two types of responses. One was a significant number of people who said better public transit, less auto dependency and more walkable neighborhoods would make them consider Midwestern living. Nice, but that comes across to me as virtue signaling; that can be said for every metro except the five in America that have actual transit systems and/or walkable neighborhoods. But the other was the Midwest’s lack of openness – its unwillingness to welcome newcomers, or adapt its culture to bring in outsiders.

It’s a bigger problem than many Midwesterners would admit. Yet it’s also a perception problem that outsiders need to get over.

Without a doubt, the region has earned this reputation. It usually comes up quickly in first conversations with people – “where’d you grow up? What high school did you go to?” Many Midwesterners try to make an immediate regional connection with someone, in a way that’s off-putting to someone who isn’t originally from here.

As the region that’s exported more people to other parts of the nation than any other, Midwestern provincialism has likely deepened over the last half century or so. Why? I think it’s become a marker for residents, a source of pride – a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But it’s not as if other regions in America are actually less insular. They’ve actually seen more influx of outsiders and had greater diversity and heterogeneity thrust on them.

Let’s start with the East Coast, specifically the Northeast. One could argue that Boston and New York City specifically, and New England and the mid-Atlantic more broadly, both developed very early on with visions of superiority related to education (Boston and Ivy League locales) and business (New York, Washington, DC, to a lesser extent Philadelphia). The East Coast became America’s proving grounds for any American who was ambitious. They built on that legacy and it continues to feed their growth – and feelings of superiority – today.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2024 Edition Released

Wendell Cox — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 20:28:58 -0400

Demographia International Housing Affordability assesses housing affordability in 94 major markets across eight nations (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the, United States). The 2024 edition focuses on data from the third quarter of 2023.

Key Points

Ratings: The report uses a median price-to-income ratio (“median multiple”) to determine affordability.

Affordability Categories: Housing markets are rated from “affordable” to “impossibly unaffordable” based on their median multiple (Table (ES-1).

Geography: Housing markets are labor markets (which are also metropolitan areas or functional urban areas), largely defined by the “commuting shed.” Housing affordability comparisons can be made, (1) between housing markets (such as a comparison between Adelaide and Melbourne) or (2) over time within the same housing market (such as between years in Adelaide).

Variations within Nations: The report emphasizes that affordability often varies significantly between markets within the same country. National averages aren’t always representative.

Housing affordability in 2023 is summarized by nation in Table ES-2.

International Housing Affordability in 2023: In the US, the most affordable market was Pittsburgh (PA), with a median multiple of 3.1, followed closely by Rochester (NY) and St. Louis (MO-IL) at 3.4, with Cleveland (OH) at 3.5. Rounding out the most affordable ten markets also includes one Canadian market, Edmonton, plus Buffalo (NY), Detroit (MI), Oklahoma City (OK) at 3.6, Cincinnati (OH-KY-IN) and Louisville (KY-IN) at 3.7. Singapore at 3.8 was also moderately unaffordable, along with, in the UK, Blackpool and Lancashire, and Glasgow at 3.9.

The Housing Affordability Crisis: Causes and a Path Forward

Middle-income households face rapidly escalating housing costs, which is the primary cause of the present cost-of-living crisis. For decades, home prices generally rose at about the same rate as income, and homeownership became more widespread. But affordability is disappearing in high-income nations as housing costs now far outpace income growth. The crisis stems principally from land use policies that artificially restrict housing supply, driving up land prices and making homeownership unattainable for many.

Urban containment policies (greenbelts urban growth boundaries, densification) are designed to limit sprawl and increase density. While well-intentioned, these policies severely constrict the land available for housing. In constrained markets, higher land values translate to dramatically higher house prices.

Economic Dynamics

Land values naturally increase closer to urban centers. Urban containment policies are associated with abrupt value spikes at established boundaries. Research confirms this, finding land prices inside urban containment boundaries can be 8-20 times higher than outside.

New Zealand's Reforms: A Model

New Zealand provides a hopeful path forward. Recognizing the crisis is rooted in high land values, new policies are proposed to open up sufficient land to accommodate demand.

A Focus on People, Not Places

The housing crisis demands prioritizing the well-being of people over abstract planning ideals. The planning orthodoxy, while aimed at improving cities, has worsened affordability. This undermines the economic opportunity essential for thriving middle- and lower-income households.

Elaboration and sources are in the full report. Click here to read and download the full report.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Lead image: Demographia International Housing Affordability — 2024 Edition cover photo from New Matilda used under CC 2.0 License.

Why London is Beating American Cities

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 01 May 2024 20:28:58 -0400

As America’s cities continue to decline, as even ardent boosters warn of “an urban doom loop”, how does London remain a global powerhouse? The straightforward answer is that it retains an old advantage: its origins as a former imperial capital.

Unlike the high-rise “transactional” cities of New York, Chicago and San Francisco, all groaning under record levels of vacancy and massive investor losses, London never had an official “downtown”, with all major business clustered in dense formations. Rather, as one observer noted in 1843, London’s development occurred organically, surrounding “itself suburb by suburb like onions 50 to rope”. Of course, parts of central London have suffered significant losses — see Canary Wharf and Spitalfields — but the capital’s archipelago of villages have mostly survived. Far more than its great American rivals, London is actually increasing its population.

This, let’s not forget, comes in the wake of Brexit, which many feared would turn the City into a tertiary player. Yet even here, despite the loss of listings from some prominent firms such as ARM, London is thriving: it has since welcomed the financial powerhouses of Bloomberg, Citadel and Alantra into its embrace.

Crucial to London’s success is its prospering technology and media industries, which, notes Tony Travers, a visiting professor at LSE, increasingly drive the capital’s economy. Its creative sector, for instance, now accounts for almost 15% of jobs in London, up from 11% in 2010. In the realm of tech, one recent study suggested that London beats New York and San Francisco. Indeed, Microsoft plans to open an AI hub in the city, part of a $2.5-billion investment strategy, following other firms such as OpenAI. According to the Harvard Business Review, this makes London both first in the world for talent attraction and the top destination for foreign investment in financial and professional services.

None of this is to say that London’s streets are paved with gold. Flick through the capital’s Evening Standard and you’ll find report after report about surges in crime. Even so, notes Munira Mirza, who served as policy director for former prime minister and London mayor Boris Johnson: “London is doing better in many ways than a lot of US cities… But for Londoners, the perception is that crime, street cleanliness, housing costs, road congestion, etc, have been getting worse because public services and infrastructure have not expanded to match the growing population.”

“London is doing better in many ways than a lot of US cities.”

And yet, she observes, overall crime rates have fallen under London’s last three mayors and, in terms of crime and anti-social behaviour, levels are well below the national average. Travers partly credits this to the fact that the UK has not experienced an American-style “opioid crisis” or “defund-the-police moment”. As a result, London saw 104 homicides last year, equivalent to 12 per million people, compared to 45.4 per million in New York, one of America’s safer cities.

A similar story is playing out in London’s classrooms, particularly when it comes to ethnic-minority performance. In one diverse district in Chicago, not one student can do grade-level math. According to data from the Illinois State Board of Education, 30 schools last year, 22 of which are in the Chicago area, failed to lift even one student to grade-level reading.

In London, by contrast, state schools are consistently improving, particularly in recently developed free schools. Moreover, immigrants are actually lifting the performance of London’s state schools above their counterparts in the rest of the country. “London’s schools are better now because of the immigrants,” suggests Mirza. The proximity of world-class universities — in London, Cambridge and Oxford — not only helps jumpstart elite industries such as tech and media, but has also attracted generations of ambitious foreigners who then choose to stay in London.

It is difficult to imagine how any rival city-states — including Singapore — could operate so successfully without the interference of a powerful central bureaucracy. In Dubai, there is no real recourse from the wrath of Sheikh Mohammed. In India, corruption, pollution and lower life expectancy make Mumbai or Delhi less than likely locales for rich investors and skilled professionals. Beirut was once promising, but is now largely a sectarian ruin. As for Latin America, even business-friendly Sao Paolo is now in poor repute.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London - by U.S. Embassy London via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.