Entries by Joel Kotkin

The Good Life, Just Beyond

If forced to compare an ice cream flavor with suburbia, many would pick vanilla. Yet, as Amanda Kolson Hurley writes in her new book, Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City, this is just one of many “misinformed clichés” about these peripheral communities.

The End of Aspiration

by Joel Kotkin — Since the end of the Second World War, middle- and working-class people across the Western world have sought out—and, more often than not, achieved—their aspiration. These usually included a stable income, a home, a family, and the prospect of a comfortable retirement.