Urban Affairs Archives

I’d Like to Believe California Can Be Saved from the Left

June 8, 2026/in California, Politics, Urban Affairs

In the coming weeks, the conservative media will have a field day thanks to the seemingly strong primary election performances of Republican Steve Hilton in the race to become the next governor of California and of Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayor’s contest.

Hilton, a former advisor to David Cameron in the UK, as well as a Fox News commentator, is certainly a brainy candidate, with personal appeal and a constructive platform. Pratt, a former reality-TV star, has run an eye-catching campaign.

But however much the Right will enjoy the notion of a Californian rebellion against its entrenched establishment, it very much remains a one-party state. Conservatives may party during the so-called “Pratt Summer” or tout “the revenge of the bourgeoisie” but the Republicans’ chances are between middling to non-existent.

It’s not even certain that either of them will reach the general election. California’s insanely slow-moving vote count leaves the possibility that one or another will fall behind once the union-led “ballot harvesting” of late ballots alters the result. This has become increasingly common, with conservative candidates often eliminated weeks after election day.

Indeed, political, demographic, and economic trends are against the Republicans’ chances. The state that spawned Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan is now reliably Democratic. Overall registration in the state is almost two to one Democratic over Republican. There has not been a Republican elected statewide for two decades.

California’s demographic profile is increasingly bad for Republicans. The state has been consistently losing its Anglo population, as well as the middle class, particularly families of all ethnicities, to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Those most likely to stay, notes the Public Policy Institute, tend to be young and often underpaid professionals, the very class that elected New York mayor Mamdani, public workers and their wards.

Long gone are the days when California was a job-producing machine in everything from manufacturing to logistics as well as tech. These constituencies were the ones who cared most about brutal income taxes, the nation’s highest unemployment (as well as youth unemployment), unaffordable housing, poor roads, mediocre schools and ever fewer good jobs. Increasingly, these constituencies and the companies they work for are just choosing to leave.

In the governor’s race, Hilton will also be up against the full power of current governor Gavin Newsom’s political machine, largely financed by public unions and Left-leaning oligarchs. Shawn Steel, the state’s irrepressible GOP National Committeeman, told me that Hilton’s financial resources are paltry compared to what his thoroughly mediocre opponent, former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra, will be able to draw on.

Read the rest of this piece at Yahoo News.
The piece first appeared on Telegraph.

Joel in the Media: Is Fascism the Wave of the Future?

RealClearInvestigations Podcast hosts, J. Peder Zane and James Varney speak with Joel Kotkin about his recent article for RCI exploring how and why fascism hasbecome a buzzword of American politics.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage image: composite of election results from Wikimedia data accessed June 7.

Socialism Once Again Rears its Ugly Head

May 25, 2026/in Politics, The Economy, Urban Affairs

Could Canada someday become a thoroughly red country? This may not be as absurd as it seems.

Although by American standards Canada is already socialist, given its strong social safety net, the country has a market-based economy, with residual commitment to property rights and basic civil liberties. Yet underneath this comforting picture, the emerging reality is frightening. Read more

Tech Bros Are Getting What They Deserve

May 18, 2026/in Urban Affairs

California’s tech oligarchs are portraying themselves as victims, as the left clamors to tax their wealth away.

Perhaps they should take some responsibility.

Once widely admired as feisty disrupters, these super-rich moguls now define the establishment in California, a state with more billionaires than any other. And it is an establishment under threat. Read more

Iranian Americans Want IRGC Regime Gone

May 6, 2026/in Demographics, Politics, Urban Affairs

The Trump administration has been cracking down on a handful of Iranian residents who have ties to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and have even allegedly been involved in gun-running while living lavish lifestyles in LA. That may leave the impression that this community might not support attempts to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Read more

The Roots of Recession

April 27, 2026/in Urban Affairs

A review of Recession: The Real Reasons Economies Shrink and What to Do About It by Tyler Goodspeed, 320 pages, Basic Venture (March 2026).

As we may be heading that way, now seems the perfect time to consider what creates a recession. In his new book, Recession, economist Tyler Goodspeed dispels many of the more mechanical notions, such as the idea that there is a causal tie between expansions and downturns, embracing instead the view that most recessions are caused by sudden shocks to the system. Read more

Canadians Must Stop Romanticizing a Failing Europe

April 24, 2026/in Politics, The Economy, Urban Affairs

U.S. President Donald Trump’s mindless, and frankly pointless, comments about Canada becoming the 51st state have stirred up latent Canadian patriotism. But it also may result in Canada, which is already economically moribund, further aligning itself with the permanent European Union bureaucracy. Read more

The Italian Dilemma

April 3, 2026/in Urban Affairs

Italy is by far my favorite European country, but what appeals to a visitor — the great museums, archeological sites and superb food— may not provide a sustainable road to a prosperous future.

Tourism injects money into an economy, and produces some mostly moderate to low end jobs. But it cannot be the basis of a successful economy, particularly for the next generation. It’s youth unemployment rate is among the EU’s highest and approaching three times that of the US. Italy also has the highest percentage of people under the age of 30 as any major European country.

As is generally the case in Europe, as well as the UK, there is no clear path for recovering economic dynamism that started to fade in the 1980s. Western Europe’s GDP per capita is about $63,000 per year, adjusted for the cost of living. In the United States, it is $86,000. Italy’s is $40,000.

The problem, Veronica de Romanis, a leading Italian policy analyst and author of the recently released L’Economia de Paura, or economy of fear, lies in a kind of lazy welfare state regime fundamentally opposed, left and right, to any meaningful change. “Italy is going backwards but Italians don’t see it,” she told me last month in Rome. She sees Italy as dominated by narrow “tribes” who protect their niches from competition.

Italy is also plagued by the lowest birth rates of any major EU country. Yet it may have a weapon that could prove useful in the post-AI era— it’s traditions of artisanship. You see this in food, fashion, urban design and art. But Italy is rich in creative talent, but lacks ways to exploit it. The low youth employment and high rate of disengagement , despite an extreme slow rate of labor force expansion, is a natural reflection of this fact.

Another aspect on this dilemma is what Italians seem to prioritize. Americans tend to be instinctively mercenary, but in Italy the priority tends to be la dolce vita, a way of life that is far more relaxed and frankly more human-focused than most EU countries.

So, is there nothing to learn from Italy? In the work I am conducting with Professor Irene Lottini from the University of Iowa, we are examining Italy’s artisan economy. This includes interviews with firms in fields as diverse as furniture making, textiles, food, jewelry and stone masonry. Together these firms possess a store house of talent that is worth Italy’s nurturing, and also our emulation.

As more of the information and high-end services sector face digitization, artisanal skills and the arts remain one area that the nerds cannot totally control. Tactile experience, as I wrote about for National Review, is in great demand, as we can see by the massive expansion of farmer’s markets and the growth of artisan industry even in the US.

As artificial intelligence entrepreneur Rony Abovitz told me, tasks that require physical skills like plumbers, carpenters, and custom design. These trades are growing rapidly while the computer-centric field has retreated to 2017 levels, notes economist Gad Levanon . Increasingly skilled workers are doing better than products of the diploma mills.

But it’s not just about economics. Italians may suffer from a stagnant economy but they also enjoy healthier food, notably less ultra-processed ones, with much production coming from local, small farms. Italians tend to live longer, despite having less money, than Americans or Germany.

Can we find a middle ground between genteel decline and the kind of high-tech nihilism common among top American tech entrepreneurs, who tend to promise us a dark future dominated by computerization and scientific hierarchy?

These are among the questions Professor Lottini and I are exploring for the Italian Institute and the Center for Demographics and Policy, both at Chapman University. Interested in your ideas on this subject as well. Please feel free to comment to my Substack.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage photo: Cinqueterre, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, by Ian MacKay.

Thoughts On a Roman Legacy

March 27, 2026/in Urban Affairs

Ever since I was in high school, Rome has fascinated me. I studied Latin for six years, including two in college, and have kept my interest for the next fifty years.

In the past three years I also have spent considerable time in the Eternal City, and its history provides lessons, both positive and negative, particularly for a citizen of what is essentially the world’s pre-eminent empire, the United States. Read more

When the AI Revolution is Over, Trades May Be the Only Jobs Left

March 18, 2026/in The Economy, Urban Affairs

The biggest long-range danger looming over the remaining liberal democracies does not come from U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin or the nutty mullahs in Iran now being pummelled. Instead, it comes from the seemingly inexorable force of technology that increasingly threatens not just to aid humanity, but replace it.
Read more

Tomorrow’s Cities Are Here

March 13, 2026/in Demographics, Urban Affairs

If you go east from hilly Austin, Texas, onto the flat coastal plain that stretches for 130 miles toward Houston, you can glimpse a future of the American city. But it won’t look like Manhattan, Chicago, or even Los Angeles. In fact, you might not realize you’re looking at a city at all.