River Davis’ recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Tokyo’s generally flat home prices had me, again, wondering about demographics. I mean, aren’t their demographics working in reverse? They have an aging population, low immigration, and a low birthrate. But Tokyo, which represents about… Read More
The University of Toronto School of Cities recently looked at the changing economic geography of Fortune 500 companies across the US from 1975 to 2017. Here is a diagram of the results taken from CityLab: New York sits at the top with 70 corporate headquarters… Read More
The Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University recently published this overview of the “socioeconomic factors affecting demand for housing in Chicago.” Here is the change in population in the City of Chicago from 1950 to 2016: And here is a comparison between Chicago and… Read More
Houston doesn’t often get a lot of love in urbanist circles. Though since Ed Glaeser published Triumph of the City and declared Houston’s unfettered sprawl the secret sauce for housing affordability, it is now frequently held up as the shining example of why housing supply… Read More
What’s happening in Houston right now is devastating. Ian Bogost of The Atlantic is calling the flood a “disaster of biblical proportions.” Harvey has unloaded 9 trillion gallons of water. It is once again reminding us of the importance of resiliency when it comes to… Read More
In response to President Trump’s proposed immigration bill, Brookings recently analyzed census data from earlier this year to demonstrate the importance of immigration for growth within much of the United States. I’d like to share three tables from their analysis. The first two look at… Read More
The New York Times recently argued that self-driving cars can’t cure traffic, but that economics can. Here is the key soundbite: “Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only… Read More
The Centre for Urban Research and Land Development at Ryerson University recently published the following chart on their blog: It’s a look at population growth across a few North American cities, broken down according to natural increases, net internal migration from other parts of the… Read More
Yesterday I wrote about urban-suburban divides within cities. And I argued that built form will largely dictate the kinds of transportation choices that people will ultimately make. As a follow-up to that, here is a chart based on the findings of a research report completed… Read More
Today is very sad day for Toronto. After 2 days of debate, City Council voted this afternoon, 24-21, in favor of rebuilding the elevated Gardiner Expressway East (”hybrid” option) that runs along the city’s eastern waterfront. And once again, Toronto is largely divided. See above image… Read More
