by Joel Kotkin — Beyond the depressing statistics, the deserted malls, the looted or abandoned Main Streets, lies the potential to use the pandemic to create the impetus for better, more sustainable and family-centric communities.
by Joel Kotkin — The rage ignited by the death of George Floyd is symptomatic of a profound sense of alienation among millions of poor, working class urbanites. The already diminished prospects facing many workers have only been worsened by the unforeseen onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic and the policies devised to combat it.
by Joel Kotkin — The last thing this divided Republic needs is more polarization, but America is now further divided by pandemic, in large part by the different experiences of various localities and in how economies function from region to region.
Despite the warnings of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others, the COVID-19 death rate in the United States appears to be more than twice as high in large urban counties as in high-density suburbs, and nearly twice as high in high-density suburbs than in lower-density ones.
by Joel Kotkin — A great connoisseur as well as sworn enemy of the free market, Vladimir Lenin might smile a bit if he witnessed what is now happening to small businesses in the current Covid-19 pandemic.
by Joel Kotkin — Who will prosper after the plague? By disrupting smaller grassroots businesses while expanding the power of technologies used in enforcement, coronavirus could further empower both tech oligarchs and the “expert” class.
by Joel Kotkin — It’s January 21, 2021 and President Biden’s first full day in the White House. Surrounded by cheering key Democratic Party constituencies and financial backers, the new president proclaims a “climate emergency” – placing essentially the entire economy under Washington’s control.
The COVID-19 pandemic will be shaping how we live, work and learn about the world long after the last lockdown ends and toilet paper hoarding is done, accelerating shifts that were already underway including the dispersion of population out of the nation’s densest urban areas and the long-standing trend away from mass transit and office concentration towards flatter and often home-based employment.
by Joel Kotkin — For the better part of this millennium, the nation’s urban planning punditry has predicted that the future lay with its densest, largest, and most cosmopolitan cities.
by Joel Kotkin — As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic remain uncertain. One possible consequence is the end of the megacity era. In its place, we may now witness a new, and necessary, dispersion of population…