Blogs

Reporters, columnists and even consultants often misunderstand urban areas and urban terms. The result can be absurd statements that compare the area in which the writer lives to somewhere else where the grass is inevitably greener, bringing to mind an expensive competitiveness report that suggested St. Louis should look to Cleveland as a model. Sometimes this is the result of just not understanding and other times it results from listening to itinerant missionaries from idealized areas who have no sense of the reality.  read more »

I studied with the Austrian economists at New York University. The Austrian school of economics (as contrasted to Keynesians or Chicago school economists) work with a theory about business cycles that essentially starts from the understanding that what appear to be almost mechanical, regular ups and downs in the economy are actually caused by the periodic disappointment of the expectations of entrepreneurs. The alternative is to suggest that business owners periodically and collective wake up stupid one morning and start making a lot of bad decisions.  read more »

Chicago Magazine has an interesting article on the sore subject of Illinois corruption. The article was written by Shane Tritsch who interviews several experts on Illinois political history. There’s no “good old days” of clean government in the Land of Lincoln. Tritsch explains a major reason for Illinois’ historical graft:  read more »

Portland is known primarily as a cool city, where people spend their 20s happily working in the service sector, drinking craft beer, eating organic food, and exploring a variety of unconventional lifestyle options. In short, Portland is weird. That’s not just an observation: it’s the city’s marketing strategy. Keep Portland Weird is a pretty common bumper sticker in the city (believe it or not, there are cars in Portland). Yet despite the non-conformist attitude of Portlanders, the municipal government seems bent on destroying everything fun about the city.  read more »

When looking for a place to settle down, one might consider cities with active cultural scenes or intellectual communities. However, young people today are looking beyond those factors and moving to where the jobs are. Portland, for example, has a thriving social scene and is one of the nation’s leaders in attracting college graduates, but it ranks 40 as the best place for young adults.  read more »

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly two years since we first wrote about the game of “hide the ball” that Junkmeister Ben Bernanke is playing. Finally, Congress is getting some admissions out of the Federal Reserve about the gusher of cash that was opened up when the insides fell out of Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme. Remember, you read it here first!  read more »

Gross Domestic Product is the basic measure of economic output. The government released 2009 GDP data for US states recently, so it’s worth taking a look. Here’s a map of percent change in total real GDP from 2000 to 2009, with increases in blue, decreases in red:  read more »

In the old days a "blurb" was a positive promotional recommendation statement on a book jacket. I have done a few myself. Now we are informed by the developer of Civita, an urban infill project in San Diego, that "blurb" really means a cross between suburban and urban.

Are they going to put a picture of it on a book jacket?  read more »

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle has released an independent analysis of the proposed Honolulu rail program to the public and to elected officials. The report was commissioned by the state Department of Transportation.  read more »

Is the new American house, with three-car garages and laundry chutes like Olympic ski runs, an improvement over the old ones that were limited to a cozy dining room, a den, and a kitchen that held a small round table on which was kept a toaster?

The size of the American house tracks the evolution of the budget deficit and national debt. Think of McMansions as you would the Federal Reserve Bank—an imposing edifice with the contents of the garage pledged to Household Finance, if not the Chinese.

Many neighborhoods have become the United States of Gatsby.  read more »