We know that educational attainment is probably the single biggest determinant of urban economic success. If you’re hoping to predict average household incomes, looking at the percentage of the population with a 4-year college degree is a pretty good place to start. But let’s take… Read More
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index that ranks countries based on four key indicators (3 dimensions): Life expectancy in years (health) Expected years of schooling (education) Mean years of schooling (education) Gross national income per capita (standard of living) Equal weighting (1/3)… Read More
Today’s post is going to be about a handful of things that have caught my attention. – Gary Hack, who is the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, recently published a book called Site Planning: International Practice. It is a textbookish… Read More
The University of Toronto just announced a new School of Cities. It will begin operations on July 1 of this year (2018) and bring together researchers from various disciplines to address the world’s most critical urban challenges. Insert stat here about the percentage of the… Read More
City Observatory tracks something that they call “The Young and Restless.” It refers to the segment of the US population that is between 25-34 years old and has a bachelor’s degree or higher. We know that people in this age bracket tend to be relatively mobile… Read More
We know that educational attainment matters a great deal for the economic success of our cities. In fact, by some measures, it is the single most important factor. City Observatory found that 60% of the variation in per capita income across large U.S. metro areas… Read More
It’s fine to talk about the importance of big cities in today’s world, but there’s another side of this coin to consider. What happens to the towns and smaller cities who aren’t guiding the global economy? Here is an interesting snippet from the NY Times… Read More
Urbanist Richard Florida has spoken a lot about a “great inversion.” This is about poverty moving to the suburbs and the core of cities becoming a kind of “gated suburb.” (i.e. wealthy) In response to this narrative, City Observatory recently published a post where they call this… Read More
Earlier this month, The Atlantic published an article called: The Free-Time Paradox in America. The gist of the article was that the wealthy are increasingly starved for time, whereas the exact opposite is happening to the poor. The article throws out this stat: “In 2015, 22… Read More
The Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation recently published a report called: State of Center City 2016. The objective was to measure the progress being made in Philadelphia’s downtown. I moved out of Center City (Rittenhouse Square) in 2009, but I still like… Read More
