Rural America is taking a beating in the news. Part of it is deserved. I grew up in rural Indiana and am shocked at some of what is going on there: severe hard drug problems, HIV outbreaks, serious crime, etc. Things are a long way from when I was a kid there in the 70s and 80s and people not only left their doors unlocked, they left their keys in the car. While I don't want to minimize the challenges facing rural America, there's a lot that has flat out gotten better since I first moved to Harrison County in first grade around … [Read more...]
What Do We Do With Shrinking Cities?
Shrinking Cities: Understanding Urban Decline in the United States By Russell Weaver, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, Jason Knight, and Amy E. Frazier Routledge (2017) Cities like Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland have lost stunning percentages of their peak population since 1950. Yet these are all in metro areas whose regional populations are much higher than in 1950, even if not at their all time peak high in all of them. Some cities like Youngstown have gone so far as to try to plan for shrinkage and a permanently reduced population future. … [Read more...]
The Quest for Food Freedom
Biting the Hands That Feed Us Baylen J. Linnken Mariza Ruelas currently faces up to two years in jail in California for the crime of selling ceviche through a Facebook food group. Welcome to the mad world of American food regulation. In Biting the Hands That Feed Us, Baylen Linnekin looks closely at a system that can take pride in a historically safe food supply but that also imposes too many rules that defy common sense. Linnekin traces the system’s origins to The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s exposé of the appalling conditions in Chicago’s … [Read more...]
Ten Things You Need to Know About Indianapolis City Culture
What makes one city different from another? Some of it is the geography, the economy, or the buildings. But a big chunk of it is culture. Every city has its own culture. A journalist recently interviewed me about Indianapolis and asked about some of the things that make that city's culture distinct. I'm reposting ten of my observations here. Keep in mind that many of these points are relative, not absolute. They are comparisons versus what I see in other cities. 1. Indianapolis has a very open social structure. Many cities have very … [Read more...]
Another Look Back at Global Squeeze
Global Squeeze: The Coming Crisis for First-World Nations Richard C. Longworth McGraw-Hill 1998 [ I recently posted part one of a look back at Richard Longworth's 1998 book Global Squeeze, which correctly predicted massive job displacement from China’s entry into the global trading system, describes how developing world countries would move up the value chain, predicts the erosion of middle-class standards of living, the rise of the gig economy, and the deterioration in race relations. He puts his finger on the nationalism vs. globalism … [Read more...]
How Richard Longworth Predicted 20 Years Ago That Globalization Would Cause a Social Crisis
Global Squeeze: The Coming Crisis for First-World Nations Richard C. Longworth McGraw-Hill 1998 Whenever we see the reality of momentous shifts in society, it's always good to go back and take a look at the people who saw it coming far away. Generally speaking, there were usually people who understood what was happening in advance. For example, Daniel Bell wrote his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society in 1976. There were probably even other earlier books touting the same theme. One person who clearly saw the challenges that … [Read more...]
Caterpillar’s HQ Move to Chicago Shows America’s Double Divide
Earlier today Caterpillar announced that it was moving its corporate headquarters from Peoria to Chicago. The move affects about 300 top-level executives. The company will retain a large presence in Peoria. This is in line with what I've written about before: the rise of the executive headquarters, where a company moves its executive suite (anywhere from 50-500 people) to a major city like Chicago while leaving the back office elsewhere. Chicago has benefitted from this more than any other city I know. In addition to many corporate HQ … [Read more...]
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s City of Spectacle
Building the City of Spectacle: Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Remaking of Chicago by Costas Spirou and Dennis R. Judd Richard M. Daley took office as mayor of Chicago in 1989. The city was at a low ebb following the bitter racial conflicts of the so-called Council Wars period, when a largely white city council fought to stymie Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor. During Daley’s 22 years in office, many of the Windy City’s neighborhoods gentrified, in part because of a blizzard of municipal-improvement projects originating with … [Read more...]
The Brooklynization of Brooklyn
The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back by Kay Hymowitz My City Journal colleague Kay Hymowitz has written a number of great articles on Brooklyn, the borough that is her home. This inspired her to write a great book on the topic of the transformation of Brooklyn called The New Brooklyn. It starts with a two-chapter history of the borough from its earliest settlement to the present day, followed by a series of chapters looking at Brooklyn today. This includes the transformation of Park Slope (where she and her husband moved … [Read more...]
Detroit’s New Streetlights Show Service Rebuilding in Action
I've been arguing that one thing struggling post-industrial cities need to do is take care of their own business, doing things like addressing legacy liabilities and rebuilding of core public services. Last week I write about Buffalo doing just this by completely re-writing its zoning code and creating a new land use map of the city to bring its planning ordinances up to date for the 21st century. Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic at the New York Times, recently wrote a feature on another good example: the replacement of Detroit's … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- …
- 36
- Next Page »