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Learning from London's Comeback
Submitted by MLewyn on Wed, 01/07/2015 - 11:40amA recent post on Citymetric.com suggests that after losing population for decades, London will soon reach its pre-World War II peak of 8.6 million people. London last achieved this population level in 1939, and lost nearly two million people after World War II, bottoming out at 6.7 million in ... read more »
Not A "War on Suburbia" Election
Submitted by MLewyn on Tue, 11/18/2014 - 11:42amAccording to Joel Kotkin, this month's elections were really about the "progressives' war on suburbia." According to Kotkin, the Democrats lost because they are "aggressively anti-suburban." Since I didn't vote for President Obama, I leave it to his supporters to defend him.
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Presidential heroes of urbanism
Submitted by MLewyn on Mon, 02/17/2014 - 10:18pmSince the weekend that just ended was Presidents' weekend, I thought now would be a good time to acknowledge some especially pro-urban Presidents. I don't plan to focus on their actual policies (a complicated topic, and one not very relevant to most pre-New Deal presidencies) but on their post... read more »
Some Cities Have More Children Than Their Suburbs
Submitted by MLewyn on Fri, 02/07/2014 - 4:51pmToday, I read a blog post by Joel Kotkin asserting, for the umpteeth time, that famlies with children prefer suburbs. But at the bottom of the post is a chart comparing the child population (as a percentage of total population) for dozens of cities and their suburbs.
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More Evidence That There Are Still Poor People In Cities (Or, I Told You So)
Submitted by MLewyn on Tue, 01/07/2014 - 12:31pmIn numerous blog posts (most extensively here) I have pointed out that despite the enormous amount of writing about suburban poverty and urban gentrification, cities still have a disproportionate share of regional poverty.
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Cities Don't Always Have Higher Taxes Than Suburbs
Submitted by MLewyn on Sat, 12/07/2013 - 7:46pmThe Brookings Institution just came out with a national map listing property taxes by county.
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Great Data on Migration
Submitted by MLewyn on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 8:40amI just found an interesting new website full of migration data (link here). The website contains migration data for almost every county in the US.
One thing I have learned: the migration into cities is still largely driven by twentysomethings. For example, Manhattan and Washington contin... read more »
Reality Check on Urban Poverty
Submitted by MLewyn on Wed, 09/25/2013 - 8:48amI've read some stories suggesting that poverty is decreasing in cities and increasing in suburbs. Urbanists see this alleged trend as evidence that cities are becoming more popular; egalitarians see it as evidence that gentrification is driving the poor into suburbia.
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Exciting New Database
Submitted by MLewyn on Fri, 09/13/2013 - 9:17amThe Lincoln Institute of Land Policy just came out with a fun new database of fiscal information about cities. A few of the things I learned after playing around in the database for an hour:
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Cities Can't Do Much Alone
Submitted by MLewyn on Thu, 08/22/2013 - 1:12pmI am about halfway through the Metropolitan Revolution (by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley) and I can't help wondering: how much good can a city do? Of course, quite a bit- but only with a friendly (or at least non-hostile) state government. There are many, many things a state government... read more »