How to Bring Them Back

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By: Howard Husack, Daniel Kennelly
On: City Journal

Photo Manhattan Institute

Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, and author of Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms (September 2019), Philanthropy Under Fire (2013), and The Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (2003). He recently spoke with Daniel Kennelly, associate editor of City Journal, about what cities can do to bring back residents and businesses after the pandemic, what to look for as the New York mayoral race heats up, and how conservative politicians might appeal to big-city voters.

What are your thoughts on New York’s prospects for the coming year?

In the near term, it’s hard to be optimistic. Even if a Covid-19 vaccine becomes widely available, there will be a hangover from the pandemic crisis. Families with school-age children have suffered under a dysfunctional Department of Education, and homelessness and lawlessness have spread. Many suburbanites who patronize the theater and restaurants have not even come into the city since March. A return to reliable city services is key to recovery. Read more

Utah Urged to Build More Single-Family Homes

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By: Tony Semerad
On: Salt Lake Tribune

More people are moving to Utah just as many millennials are taking a new look at homebuying instead of renting.

To offer enough affordable homes and keep the state’s economy on the mend in the COVID-19 era, cities and developers may need to do something radical. They may need to go back in time.

At least, back to when homebuilders focused more on single-family houses with bigger lots, an approach to growth that many planners now view as “sprawl” and that rapidly expanded the Wasatch Front metropolitan area.

Top researchers at a Houston think tank brought that vision to Utah leaders this week, arguing the state should put aside its “smart growth” strategies of higher-density homes around business centers in favor of what they call “smart sprawl.”

They point to the rising exodus from places like San Francisco and New York, with people fleeing closely built apartments and condominiums for Utah’s more open spaces and lower cost of living.

“If we’re going to see future lockdowns, which is not beyond the pale, what you’ll find is that you’re a lot better off in a house with a backyard than you are in a one-bedroom apartment,” said Joel Kotkin, an author and presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University in Southern California.

Read more

Feudalism Without A Soul

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Casey Chalk reviews The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Perhaps one of the great cons of the twenty-first century has been corporate America’s success in deceiving middle-class and lower-class Americans that corporations are on their side, while profiting from international tax havens and cheap foreign or immigrant labor that reduces American jobs and keeps money from American taxpayers. Major American businesses declare their woke credentials vis-à-vis Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and other activist causes, while they send their jobs (and even sometimes their headquarters) overseas. Companies denounce “toxic masculinity” while benefiting from foreign child labor. Read more

The Never-Ending Threat of Utopia

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Robert Grant Price reviews The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Feudal times are here again. This is a thesis Joel Kotkin hammers to a fine point in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, a clarifying study-of-the-moment presented as sweeping history.

The idea behind the book is simple: Kotkin says the social hierarchy of the Middle Ages closely traces the lines of today. If our society continues down the current path of economic disparity and social disintegration, the feudalism we left behind will return. With force. And it will be the middle class, the benefactors of liberal capitalism, who will suffer most. Read more

Joel Kotkin talks with Rod Arquette About How the GOP Can Win Over Millennial Voters

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By: Rod Arquette
On: The Rod Arquette Show at iHeart radio

Joel Kotkin joins the Rod Arquette show to discuss how the GOP can win over millennial voters. Upward mobility is a key issue for millennials, and problem solving at a local level (rather than a federal level).

 

 

Related:

The Coronavirus Means Millennials Are More Screwed Than Ever
Millennials Find New Hope In The Heartland
The High Cost of a Home Is Turning American Millennials Into the new Serfs

Joel Kotkin talks with Vicki McKenna About “Blue” Policy Failure

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By: Vicki McKenna
On: The Vicki McKenna Show at iHeart radio

Joel Kotkin talks with Vicki about his recent piece entitled Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow — how the “blue” left needs to reset toward addressing pragmatic issues. Joel and Vicki discuss how “blue” policies are failing the very minorities and working class people they purport to serve.

 

Related:

Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow

Joel Kotkin talks with Dan Proft: Blue Urban Leaders Failing Minorities and Working Class

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By: Dan Proft
On: The Dan Proft Show on Omny Studio

Joel Kotkin talks with Dan Proft about his recent piece entitled Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow — how the pandemic is highlighting the failures of big urban — and typically “blue” metros to develop policies that actually benefit workers and minorities. Joel and Dan discuss how white progressives and the political class fail to address the pragmatic challenges with policies that minorities and workers need to pursue the “American dream”, and how minorites and workers are voting with their feet towards smaller metropolitan areas in order to realize homeownership and upward mobility.

Related:

Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow

Green Policies Won’t Keep California Truckin’

Joel Kotkin quoted in NYTimes OpEd About 2020 Election

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By: Thomas B. Edsall
On: New York Times

Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute, argues that in other circumstances, the Trump themes might be effective. Referring to densification — a strategy to create affordable housing — Kotkin argues that people of all races and ethnicities generally “do not like density” and oppose what the gentry wants — that is to take the poor out of the cities and impose them on the middle class. Many minority communities see this as well, and they were critical in defeating forced densification here in California.

A strategy designed to capitalize on these views, Kotkin continued, “would work better if the president was not Trump.” To many people, “he is an offensive character with a déclassé base.”

Even though “Trump is better organized” than he was last time “and the riots and the strident B.L.M. rhetoric rubs even many old liberals the wrong way,” Kotkin concluded, “my sense is that the Dems hold their suburban edge, but perhaps not by as much as 2018.”

 

Related pieces:

Why the 2020 Election Will Be Decided in the Suburbs

The New Geography of America, Post-coronavirus

It Wasn’t Rural ‘Hicks’ Who Elected Trump: The Suburbs Were — And Will Remain — The Real Battleground

Joel Kotkin talks with Lars Larson: Progressive Policies Fail Working Class and Minorities

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By: Lars Larson
On: SoundCloud

Joel Kotkin talks with Lars Larson about how progressive policies haven’t been helping blue-collar workers and minorities. The progressive movement has shifted from upholding the value of work, towards what Marx called the “proletarian alms-bag.”

Progressive politics is no longer about getting a job, moving up, buying a house, raising a family…
— Joel Kotkin

Related:

Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow

Joel Kotkin talks with Madeleine Brand About the Future of Cities

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By: Madeleine Brand
On: KCRW

People have been fleeing cities for months, reports show. A new NPR and Harvard poll out today shows the pandemic’s financial toll on America’s four largest cities: Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Houston. In LA, more than half of all households report serious financial problems. Black and Latino communities are disproportionately affected nationwide.

KCRW talks about the future of cities with Joel Kotkin, a professor and fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, and author of “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.” Also in the conversation is Annalee Newitz, a science writer and the author of the forthcoming book “Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.”

The important thing is to understand that these trends existed before the pandemic. Over the last three-four years, LA, Chicago, New York all lost population. Migration has been moving a) to suburbs, b) to some smaller, more affordable cities. So I think we had a trend that was already developing that is now accelerating.
— Joel Kotkin

Related pieces:

Is the Big Cities Boom Over?

The Twilight of Great American Cities — how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting outmigration from large cities to smaller communities