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How cities can drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens
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Urban Reform Institute
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Houston, Texas 77027
Urban Reform Institute is a 501c3 Non-Profit organization
that exists to promote approaches that enable cities to
drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens.
Economic Progress is More Effective Than Protests
in Demographics, Economics, Urban Issues/by Joseph BecseyBy Joel Kotkin Ta-Nehisi Coates and the new wave of black nationalists are selling a line that is inimical to real racial progress in America. The election of Barack Obama promised to inaugurate the dawn of a post-racial America. Instead we seem to be stepping ever deeper into a racial quagmire. The past two month […]
What Jane Jacobs Got Wrong About Cities
in Economics, Urban Issues/by Joseph BecseyBy Joel Kotkin The peerless urban theorist misunderstood the suburbs and failed to see how gentrification would make urban neighborhoods unaffordable to all but the rich. Few people have had more influence on thinking about cities than the late Jane Jacobs. The onetime New Yorker turned Torontonian, Jacobs, who died in 2006, has become something […]
Opportunity Urbanism: A Novel Idea For U.S. Cities
in Demographics, Education, Housing, Planning, Small Cities, Urban Issues/by Mike NewBy Scott Beyer… As the U.S. grows more urban and diverse, the debate rages over which city-building model will best create future prosperity. A new Houston think tank is providing views on this subject seldom heard in urban planning circles. In late 2014, Joel Kotkin, a Chapman University geographer and fellow Forbes writer, started the Center […]
How to Develop Detroit
in Housing, Planning/by Joseph BecseyBy Rick Harrison — Detroit’s downtown is gentrifying— or, to be more accurate, a very small portion…
Maximizing Opportunity Urbanism with Robin Hood Planning
in Planning, Reports/by Tory GattisBy Tory Gattis — How enlightened planners can be champions…
Why Some Cities Are Better For Minorities Than Others
in Demographics, Housing/by Joseph BecseyJacksonville, Florida, wins the prize for best American city – for Latinos. A study by the Center for Opportunity Urbanism determined which U.S. cities are most welcoming to minorities. It considered affordable housing, median household incomes, self-employment rates and population growth. Joel Kotkin, executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, discusses the study findings […]
The California Dream has Moved Away
in Housing/by Joseph BecseyBy Wendell Cox Southern California faces a serious middle income housing affordability crisis. I refer to middle income housing, because this nation has become so successful in democratizing property ownership that the overwhelming majority of middle income households own their own homes in most of the country. Nonetheless, it is assumed that all these households […]
Mall’s Washed Up? Not Quite Yet
in Demographics, Economics, Suburbs/by Joseph BecseyBy Joel Kotkin — The conventional wisdom wrote off the shopping mall long ago, but while no one was looking, the reinvented mall…
Best Poverty Cure: Escape from Baltimore
in Economics, Education, Urban Issues/by Joseph BecseyBy William McGurn — New evidence shows minorities now do better in the American South. Of all the “solutions” for post-riot Baltimore, the best poverty cure…
Better Suburbs = Better Cities: Employment and the Importance of the Suburban Economy
in Economics, Suburbs, Urban Issues/by Joseph BecseyBy Ross Elliot — Australia’s inner city areas and CBDs are a focus of media and public policy attention, with good reason…