I find the article ends up rambling a bit, but I like the idea presented right at the beginning. The idea that cities can never really find equilibrium. They’re either dying, or victims of their own success.
Here’s that paragraph:
Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. In the seventies and eighties, the seemingly permanent urban crisis became the verdict that American civilization had passed on itself. Forty years later, cities mostly thrive, crime has been in vertiginous decline, the young cluster together in old neighborhoods, drinking more espresso per capita in Seattle than in Naples, while in San Francisco the demand for inner-city housing is so keen that one-bedroom apartments become scenes of civic conflict—and so big cities turn into hateful centers of self-absorbed privilege. We oscillate between “Taxi Driver” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities” without arriving at a stable picture of something in between.
I like this because there’s truth to it. But at the end of day, this is just one of the many challenges facing great city building.
I find the article ends up rambling a bit, but I like the idea presented right at the beginning. The idea that cities can never really find equilibrium. They’re either dying, or victims of their own success.
Here’s that paragraph:
Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. In the seventies and eighties, the seemingly permanent urban crisis became the verdict that American civilization had passed on itself. Forty years later, cities mostly thrive, crime has been in vertiginous decline, the young cluster together in old neighborhoods, drinking more espresso per capita in Seattle than in Naples, while in San Francisco the demand for inner-city housing is so keen that one-bedroom apartments become scenes of civic conflict—and so big cities turn into hateful centers of self-absorbed privilege. We oscillate between “Taxi Driver” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities” without arriving at a stable picture of something in between.
I like this because there’s truth to it. But at the end of day, this is just one of the many challenges facing great city building.
To solve the problem of affordable housing you could just be a city in decline. But that’s not much fun. So the better option, however difficult it may be, is to figure out how to manage the negative externalities associated with winning.
This morning Fred Wilson linked to a Bloomberg article on his blog called, Maybe This Global Slowdown Is Different. There are a bunch of great charts throughout the piece and I’d like to share 3 of them here.
The first chart shows how per capita energy consumption has dropped remarkably in the United States since the 1990s, but how, not surprisingly, China’s rate is increasing.
The second chart shows car sales in the US. There was a big drop off during The Great Recession, and though sales have rebounded, they still haven’t reached their late 1990s peak. But that’s not to say that they won’t.
The United Nations recently released its 2015 version of World Population Prospects. It looks as if they put out and revise this report every 5 years.
The Economist then took some of their data and assembled it into the following charts:
To solve the problem of affordable housing you could just be a city in decline. But that’s not much fun. So the better option, however difficult it may be, is to figure out how to manage the negative externalities associated with winning.
This morning Fred Wilson linked to a Bloomberg article on his blog called, Maybe This Global Slowdown Is Different. There are a bunch of great charts throughout the piece and I’d like to share 3 of them here.
The first chart shows how per capita energy consumption has dropped remarkably in the United States since the 1990s, but how, not surprisingly, China’s rate is increasing.
The second chart shows car sales in the US. There was a big drop off during The Great Recession, and though sales have rebounded, they still haven’t reached their late 1990s peak. But that’s not to say that they won’t.
The United Nations recently released its 2015 version of World Population Prospects. It looks as if they put out and revise this report every 5 years.
The Economist then took some of their data and assembled it into the following charts:
And the third chart shows the tremendous shift in the US over the last 65 years from the consumption of stuff to services.
This last one is fascinating. And it ties into the argument that the way value is created in our economy has shifted dramatically.
But I wonder if this change is really as sharp as it seems.
If you look at what makes up “services”, you’ll see that housing (and utilities) and healthcare make up over 50% of what is considered to be personal spending on services. And if you look at housing and utilities spending since the 1960s in the US, it has increased dramatically.
So how much of this shift from stuff-to-services is actually being driven by housing?
It’s obviously extremely difficult to predict what will happen in the world by 2100, but to the extent that forecasting is possible, the world’s population is expected to reach somewhere around 11.2 billion people. Today it’s 7.3 billion.
The bulk of this growth is expected to happen first in Africa, and then in Asia. By 2100, Africa’s share of the global population is expected to grow to 39% and Asia’s share is expected to decline to 44%.
If you’ve been following population trends, most of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. The meaningful population growth happening in the world today is happening in the developing world.
That’s why architects, such as Rem Koolhaas, have been studying cities like Lagos (Nigeria) since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Below is a photo from a book/research project that I love called Mutations (2000). I pulled it from my bookshelf this morning.
It’s interesting to think about what all of this will mean for the global economy and for global governance.
The United States is about to be alone when it comes to advanced economies with a globally competitive population. Europe is shrinking, which leads me to believe that a strong EU is likely important. And we now have lots of megalopolises with big populations, but with very low income levels.
And the third chart shows the tremendous shift in the US over the last 65 years from the consumption of stuff to services.
This last one is fascinating. And it ties into the argument that the way value is created in our economy has shifted dramatically.
But I wonder if this change is really as sharp as it seems.
If you look at what makes up “services”, you’ll see that housing (and utilities) and healthcare make up over 50% of what is considered to be personal spending on services. And if you look at housing and utilities spending since the 1960s in the US, it has increased dramatically.
So how much of this shift from stuff-to-services is actually being driven by housing?
It’s obviously extremely difficult to predict what will happen in the world by 2100, but to the extent that forecasting is possible, the world’s population is expected to reach somewhere around 11.2 billion people. Today it’s 7.3 billion.
The bulk of this growth is expected to happen first in Africa, and then in Asia. By 2100, Africa’s share of the global population is expected to grow to 39% and Asia’s share is expected to decline to 44%.
If you’ve been following population trends, most of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. The meaningful population growth happening in the world today is happening in the developing world.
That’s why architects, such as Rem Koolhaas, have been studying cities like Lagos (Nigeria) since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Below is a photo from a book/research project that I love called Mutations (2000). I pulled it from my bookshelf this morning.
It’s interesting to think about what all of this will mean for the global economy and for global governance.
The United States is about to be alone when it comes to advanced economies with a globally competitive population. Europe is shrinking, which leads me to believe that a strong EU is likely important. And we now have lots of megalopolises with big populations, but with very low income levels.
