From Tragedy to Opportunity: We Could Live Better When Today’s Mayhem Ends

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.
Sawmills in Shelton, WashingtonPublic Domain

Domestic Migration to Dispersion Accelerates (Even Before COVID)

by Wendell Cox — In what could turn out to be a “dry run” for the post-COVID19 era, net domestic migration has strongly shifted away from the larger metropolitan areas, to smaller areas.
Small businesses on street in small town

The Lifeblood of America

by Aaron M. Renn — Shutdowns mandated by the coronavirus are a pending apocalypse for small businesses, which employ 48 percent of American workers. Businesses that either can’t reopen or are suffering a big drop in revenue will soon be insolvent. Some have already announced that they will be shutting down.
Illustration of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19

The Coronavirus is Changing the Future of Home, Work, and Life

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.
The Economist cover - and some housing facts

To The Economist: Planning, Not Home Ownership, Caused the Housing Crisis

by Wendell Cox — The January 16, 2020 cover story in The Economist magazine trumpeted “The West’s biggest economic policy mistake: It’s obsession with home ownership undermines growth, fairness and public faith in capitalism...”

California Preening: Golden State on Path to High-Tech Feudalism

by Joel Kotkin — “We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta....” declared then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. In truth, the Golden State is becoming a semi-feudal kingdom, with the nation’s widest gap between middle and upper incomes—72 percent, compared with the U.S. average of 57 percent—and its highest poverty rate.
San Joaquin county aerial photoWendell Cox

The Expanding and Dispersing San Francisco Bay Area

by Wendell Cox — This decade has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area (the San Jose-San Francisco combined statistical area or CSA), with the addition of three Central Valley metropolitan areas, Stockton, Modesto and Merced. Over the same period, there has been both a drop in the population growth rate and a shift of growth to the Central Valley exurban metropolitan areas.
Urban Midrise area with light rail

Three Studies That Show Density Doesn’t Determine Car Travel

by Fanis Grammenos — Recent research sheds new light on the critical issue of the link between car travel and urban density. Conventional planning wisdom has it that increasing development density bestows benefits, most importantly that of reducing driving.
Greater Los Angeles area aerial view

Greater Los Angeles Area Growth Tanking and Dispersing

by Wendell Cox — For decades, there has been substantial dispersion of population in Greater Los Angeles (Los Angeles combined statistical area or CSA), as the suburban areas outside the urban core have dominated population growth.

Younger Americans Don’t Hate Suburbia

by Samuel J Abrams — new data from AEI’s “Survey on Community and Society shows that suburbs are also politically diverse places where younger Americans report having vibrant social lives and dynamic economic opportunities.