California’s Housing Crisis and the Density Delusion

by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox — Once seen as a human-scale alternative to high density cities of the past, California’s cities are targeted by policy makers and planners who claim ever greater densification will help relieve the state’s severe housing crisis.

Public domain photo of roughnecks at an oil well, by NIOSH

Where Small Town America Is Thriving

by Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill — Big city America has long demonstrated a distaste for its smaller cousins. While many of these smaller communities are in demographic decline as the ambitious young go elsewhere, smaller communities are far more diverse — and have far greater potential — than is commonly believed.

Senate Chamber at the California State Capitol

Left and Lefter in California

by Joel Kotkin — The California Democratic Party’s refusal to endorse the reelection of Senator Dianne Feinstein represents a breaking point both for the state’s progressives and, arguably, the future of the party nationwide.

The Evilution of Silicon Valley

How Silicon Valley Went From ‘Don’t Be Evil’ to Doing Evil

Once seen as the saviors of America’s economy, Silicon Valley is turning into something more of an emerging axis of evil. “Brain-hacking” tech companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, as one prominent tech investor puts it, have become so intrusive as to alarm critics on both right and left.

View of Salt Lake City

The New Opportunity Boomtowns

A century ago Detroit was a boomtown and Los Angeles a sleepy refuge for sun-seeking Midwesterners. A half-century later, L.A. was the fastest-growing big city in the high-income world, while Detroit was beginning its long tailspin. In the ’70s, New York was the “rotten apple” and seemed destined for further decline…

Photo credit: smoothgroover22 via Flickr under CC 2.0 License

Autonomous Cars Are About to Transform the Suburbs

Suburbs have largely been dismissed by environmentalists and urban planners as bad for the planet, a form that needed to be eliminated to make way for a bright urban future. Perhaps a better approach would be to address its most glaring environmental weakness: dependence on gas-powered automobiles.

From Disruption to Dystopia: Silicon Valley Envisions the City of the Future

The tech oligarchs who already dominate our culture and commerce, manipulate our moods, and shape the behaviors of our children while accumulating capital at a rate unprecedented in at least a century want to fashion our urban future in a way that dramatically extends the reach of the surveillance state already evident in airports and on our phones.

Steve Bannon speaks at CPAC

Getting On the Road to Republican Resurgence

by Joel Kotkin — To be sure, Republican control of the states is at a historic high-water mark, but the fundamentals seem to be collapsing. Its base constituencies — small towns, white male and high school educated voters — are demographically shrinking.

Infrastructure repairs

Trump’s Infrastructure Plan is a Rare, and Potentially Bipartisan, Feel Good Moment

President Trump’s proposed trillion dollar plus infrastructure program represents a rare, and potentially united feel good moment. Yet before we jump into a massive re-do of our transportation, water and electrical systems, it’s critical to make sure we get some decent bang for the federal buck.

The Three Faces of the Democratic Party Are Coming to a Head

In the wake of President Trump’s first official State of the Union speech, and the positive momentum in the economy, the putative “party of the people” now faces a much under-addressed internal crisis. United against Trump, the factions which dominate the party increasingly operate at cross purposes.