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"New Geography, the online magazine created by Joel Kotkin and others with a special focus on demographics and trends, has been tracking the implosion of California in an interesting way: by comparing it to Texas."

Joel on The American

In a lengthy comparison of government efficiency between the states of California and Texas in a City Journal article, Voegeli shows California’s government model fails to deliver for its citizens and overcharges dearly for that failure. Quoting the New Geography’s (and occasional Fox and Hounds contributor) Joel Kotkin, to make the point: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California.  read more »

"Those decades are certainly making a difference in the political scene, report authors Morley Winograd and Michael Hais in the book, "Millennial Makeover; MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics" (2008, Rutgers University Press, $24.95). They write that today's youth are taking more tolerant attitudes to the voting booth, and giving modern-day pollsters a completely different set of numbers on some interesting political issues, compared to their parents."  read more »

“Copenhagen was always doomed by the opposition from China, India and Russia. It was always a rich man’s club — E.U., U.S. and Japan — and can only succeed by weakening those economies vis-à-vis the developing countries. In the U.S., U.K. and parts of Europe, the cap-and-trade system is being seen ... as a rigged game that hurts the middle and working classes, benefits Wall Street, expands the bureaucracy and may well do very little to clean up the environment.  read more »

"Indeed by some accounts, most embarrassingly in a recent Time magazine cover, the shift to green technologies has already created a “thriving” economy."

Joel on Reuters Blog

First, yes, Michael Lind is spot on. We should be pledging to other people, not the government.

Michael on The Socratic Gadfly

A piece (also reflecting on the “zillions of pictures to illustrate the vast emptiness of Detroit) in the Urbanophile blog by Aaron Renn on “Detroit as the New American Frontier” was resurrected in the New York Times and Time magazine. “One thing this massive failure has made possible is ability to come up with radical ideas for the city, and potentially to even implement some of them. Places like Flint and Youngstown might be attracting new ideas and moving forward, but it is big cities that inspire the big, audacious dreams. And that is Detroit.”  read more »

A good friend of mine, a Democratic mayor here in California, describes the Obama administration as "Moveon.org run by the Chicago machine." This combination may have been good enough to beat John McCain in 2008, but it is proving a damned poor way to run a country or build a strong, effective political majority. And while the president's charismatic talent -- and the lack of such among his opposition -- may keep him in office, it will be largely as a kind of permanent lame duck unable to make any of the transformative changes he promised as a candidate.  read more »

Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there's a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and midsize cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as "cool" urban places.  read more »