ll over the
UK, says Unsworth, the city-living market has been skewed by
speculative investors buying apartments off plan that would be
described as "compact" by any self-respecting estate
agent. "Now the market is swinging back towards
owner-occupiers," she says, "so it's important that
developers are held to setting aside 15% of their new projects
for affordable housing. Otherwise we'll never have sustainable
communities with a full range of services."
The Guardian
Centred cities
Without families, cities cannot survive
By Chris Arnot
Read the Commentary
In
Kotkin's view, urban regions like metropolitan Phoenix enjoy
some distinct advantages that may position them as growth
centers in the global economy. Many of those advantages are
familiar ones: affordable housing, rapid population growth
(including a great number of young adults), a local economic
culture that values entrepreneurship.
The Arizona Republic
A Phoenix rising to future
Urban expert sees city on a path to global dynamics
By Doug MacEachern
Read the Commentary
Today,
Kotkin said, high-rise construction is on the wane and Los
Angeles is defined by an alternative urban landscape — the
single-family residential model that has structured the city's
growth since the turn of the last century. "You have to
plan Los Angeles in accordance with the way L.A. was
designed," he said. Half of New York works in Manhattan,
Kotkin notes; just 7% of Los Angeles works downtown. What works
one place, he adds, will not necessarily work in the other.
Los Angeles Times
THE STATE: Tall, Green, Vital: L.A. as Mayor Dreams It
Villaraigosa sees a city of parks, high-rise housing, a subway
to the sea. Can the idea become reality?
By Jim Newton
Read the Commentary
St. Croix County feels
almost a world away from the hustle and bustle of St. Paul and
Minneapolis, which lie within easy commuting distance. From
Hudson, it's about a 25-minute drive to St. Paul. There's open
space, farms and woods, plus the scenic St. Croix River. But
there is the first glimmer of sprawl, a few strip malls, chain
restaurants and motels, homes sprouting on former farm fields.
Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel
Welcome to Minnesota
Twin Cities workers find comforts of home in St. Croix,
Wisconsin's fastest-growing county
By Bill Glauber
Read the Commentary
Urban planners strive to institute schemes designed to snuff out
"sprawl" in favor of high density living, building up instead of out,
and a revival of core cities. But homeowners, especially young families, want
their little piece of paradise out in the countryside and away from the cities.
Metro West Daily News
Lambert:American dream isn’t a highrise
By John P. Lambert
Read the Commentary
T he $350
million busway across the San Fernando Valley continues to draw
16,000 daily riders - well above early projections - not only
from the ranks of the transit-dependent, but also those who
never thought they'd regularly ride a bus in car-crazed L.A.
Los Angeles Daily News
Busway proving fruitful
Riders say busway saves time, stress
By Lisa Mascaro
Read the Commentary
What's really going on is that the
"young creatives" — again, a subset of their age group — didn't
want traditional jobs. They started their own economy. They sewed scooter wear
and designed Web sites and started record labels and launched art exhibits and
opened a lot of coffee shops. So they're self-employed or they work retail by
day and design by night — off the radar of traditional jobs data. But they
show up elsewhere. The rate of their business start ups here is fourth among
the 50 largest U.S. cities.
The Oregonian
Don't call them slackers
They may be underemployed, but Portland's young creatives are
doing something — the economy just has to figure out what
By Erin Hoover Barnett
Read the Commentary
There's
trouble brewing in the best burger chain in the West. From the
company that invented the drive-through, canned the carhop and
to this day still shuns microwaves, freezers and warming bins,
an in-house power struggle is causing consternation among the
cognoscenti of a good greasy meal.
The Washington Post
In Calif., Internal Lawsuits Served Up at Burger Chain
Iconic In-N-Out Battles Executive Over Firm's Direction
By John Pomfret
Read the Commentary
One of the
most striking features of "new suburbanism" is the
dramatic shift from cars to walking. In the refurbished downtown
areas, especially, residents are parking their automobiles in
city lots off main streets so they can stroll along gussied-up
avenues chock-full of restaurants, shops and clubs. They can
people-watch in central plazas and run errands on their lunch
hours.
Los Angeles Times
Back to the 'burbs
The trend starts here. Southern California is the test lab for a
new kind of suburb where homes front parks and residents shop on
foot.
By Diane Wedner
Read the Commentary
Parts
of the park, including sports fields, are expected to open by
2008, with the first buildings ready by 2012. Officials say the
park may take decades to complete. Boosters hope it will offer
an outdoor experience beyond the county's many wilderness parks,
golf courses and beaches. In an area sometimes derided for its
soulless suburban sprawl, officials say they hope the park will
be as prominent a landmark as Disneyland.
Los Angeles Times
N.Y. Design Team Chosen to Create a Showpiece O.C. Park
By Jean O. Pasco and Christopher Goffard
Read the Commentary
Many
observers say 40-year-old Marina del Rey — one of the county's
most prime pieces of real estate — has been stuck in the
1960s. Its older
apartment buildings are blocky, bland and lack defining
architectural features. The hip stores and trendy restaurants
that propel spending on the Westside are mostly absent. It's
usually impractical to walk from one establishment to the next
because Marina del Rey is laid out for the convenience of
motorists, not pedestrians.
Los Angeles Times
Marina del Rey Makeovers Put It on Course Out of 'Time Warp'
The county-owned entity is getting about $1.5 billion in
residential and commercial upgrades.
By Roger Vincent
Read the Commentary
It's true
that cities have experienced a resurgence in the past 10 years,
but the real action is still out here on the fringe. All the
population growth of all the major U.S. cities in this decade
still doesn't equal the growth of just two suburban California
counties: San Bernardino and Riverside. The flow of people
moving into cities is but a trickle compared with the torrent
moving out to exurbia.
The New York Times
A Nation of Villages
By David Brooks
Read the Commentary
Some community leaders
were upset with Kotkin for his offhand comment, “Your downtown
sucks.” But his main message was that St. Louis has a lot of
affordable, livable neighborhoods and that we should be
marketing ourselves to 30-something professionals with families,
not to 20-something hipsters in search of the urban lifestyle.
Saint Louis
Post-Dispatch
Kotkin defends the burbs
By David Nicklaus
Read the Commentary
Some
problems, of course, continue to plague suburbs as well as
cities — and many of them are the same problems.
Unaffordability tops the list. In October, the median price of a
single-family home in King County, Washington (where Seattle is
situated), was $390K, and a real estate analyst dryly noted that
buying this home now requires nearly 150 percent of the local
median family income. (Shocking news to Northwesterners, but the
source of rueful humor to many Californians who can’t buy a
garage for that amount.)
Sunset
Best places to live
How life in Western suburbia is changing
By Lawrence W. Cheek
Read the Commentary
The
mayor has called the Convention Center, which loses money and
costs the city millions of dollars in debt service, a "big
white elephant." There
has been some criticism of the development, though, both from
opponents of the public-financing package and urban theorists
such as Joel Kotkin, senior fellow at the New American
Foundation. "I keep asking: Why are we building this
hotel?" Kotkin said. "The attraction of Los Angeles is
in its beaches; yet they are investing all this effort in an
area of the city that I don't think most people want to be
in."
Los Angeles Daily News
Hotel plan back to life
City keeps subsidy at $300 mil
By Dan Laidman and Rick Orlov
Read the Commentary
Villaraigosa
has made smart growth a major component of his policy speeches,
telling one civic group in the San Fernando Valley that
residents need to shift their expectations away from the
traditional three-bedroom home with a back yard and toward more
densely organized condominiums. The
speech drew criticism from one urban historian, who warned that
Villaraigosa's embrace of density could prompt a backlash,
particularly in the city's single-family neighborhoods.
Daily Breeze
Veteran planner hired to guide Los Angeles' growth
Mayor selects San Diego Planning Director S. Gail Goldberg to
run a department that will decide where new housing is built
across the city for the next decade.
By David Zahniser
Read the Commentary
The
52-year-old Democrat also kept the attention of this city's
notoriously fickle broadcast media with frequent public
appearances and eye-catching gimmicks. He's
delivered traffic reports from a television news helicopter,
descended into a subway station under construction to publicize
new tunneling operations and demonstrated Christmas tree
recycling techniques for the cameras. But he believes his
biggest accomplishment is renewing the city's "can-do
spirit." "L.A. is starting to believe in itself
again," Villaraigosa said.
Sacramento Bee
Mayor patches up L.A.
Villaraigosa wows 'em early, but tests await
By Laura Mecoy
Read the Commentary
During his first six
months in office, Villaraigosa has leveraged politics and
personality to forge alliances between feuding hotel workers and
owners, with a community upset with a high-profile police
shooting and address a more than decade-old lawsuit over
modernization of Los Angeles International Airport.
Los Angeles Daily News
Mayor making mark on L.A.
Critics call mayor's visions conflicting
By Rick Orlov
Read the Commentary
On one level, it’s
hard to see why suburbia would need defending. As Kotkin
regularly points out, more than 90 percent of the growth in US
metropolitan areas since 1950 has taken place in the suburbs,
and even as cities made their comeback, between 1990 and 2000,
areas outside of cities grew faster. For hundreds of millions of
Americans, the suburbs were and are where they choose to live.
The only problem, for most people, is being able to afford a
home in the suburb of their choice.
Commonwealth
Conversation
THE NEW Suburbanite
Joel Kotkin says sprawl fighters should stop trying to push
people and jobs back into cities, and get to work on making
suburbia a better place.
Read the Commentary
Requires
Adobe Reader
Some, including the
developers who keep spending money on downtown housing, think
Kotkin is wrong, but he believes the much-publicized boom is
about to fizzle. Economic and demographic growth, he said, will
continue to move toward suburbs, smaller cities and college
towns.
Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel -
ON WISCONSIN:
Crystal balls lack one thing: Clarity
But analysts say cell phone spam, smart cards lie ahead
By Rick Romell
Read the Commentary
Even
the most deeply rooted older suburbanites are rediscovering the
joys of cities. Developers are converting old factories and
offices into expensive lofts, and aging baby boomers with fat
retirement funds and empty nests are snapping them up.
Working-class city neighborhoods are being redeveloped and
turning upscale. The
resurgence of cities' popularity among people of all ages is
making urban living less affordable for the young and less
affluent.
USA Today
More of the young and hip fight urban urge
By Haya El Nasser
Read the Commentary
New
Orleans had roughly half the U.S. average in manufacturing and
wholesale trade, and business-focused cities like Houston have
taken the lead in energy, finance, engineering and medical
services, Kotkin said. "All this happened despite New
Orleans being a city that was heavily gay, very cool and
extremely hip."
The Baton Rouge Advocate
N.O. economic potential hurt by leaders' neglect
By Lanny Keller
Read the Commentary
Where
does the idea that sprawl originated in post-World War II
America come from? From New York-centric writers, I think. They
observed that the empty potato fields of Nassau County started
filling up with suburbs, like the original Levittown, right
after World War II. New York-centrics tend to think all cities
are like New York, where most people live in apartments and very
many never drive a car. But of course New York is the exception,
not the rule, not just in America but in most of the
world.
U.S.News & World
Report
Barone Blog
Sprawl is the natural human condition
By Michael Barone
Read the Commentary
Salomone said tall buildings have exploded in other communities
as people clamor for urban life. "I saw it happen in San
Diego and it blew me away," said Salomone. "I think it’s
going to blow people away here." Kotkin isn’t so sure. He
sees the high-rise proposals as developers playing
"chicken." The market won’t support many projects
labeled as hip urban living, Kotkin said. The current trend is
driven largely by investors who are skittish on the stock market
and looking to make a quick buck in real estate, he said.
East Valley Tribune
Downtown Tempe reaches for the sky
By Garin Groff
Read the Commentary
An intense national debate
has focused on the economic benefit - or cost - of immigration.
Many conservatives argue that immigrants burden schools and
public services but add little to the tax base. Others counter
that immigrants fill key jobs, help to revitalize crumbling
inner cities and start businesses at a higher rate than
native-born Americans.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Immigrants and the economy: Are we missing out?
By Eric Heisler
Read the Commentary
Cities aren't adding
jobs like they used to; indeed, the 1990s marked the first major
economic expansion without significant urban high-rise office
construction. Further tilting the balance toward suburbs, Kotkin
argued, many cities today are managing their business climates
poorly.
Commercial Property
News
SPECIAL REPORT: Suburbs Hold Key to Development's Future,
Says Urban Expert Kotkin
By Paul Rosta
Read the Commentary
In the past, [Kotkin]
notes, New Yorkers have tended to turn tail for more
family-friendly parts at around age 35, the age an urban mother
starts panicking about whether the institution her toddler will
someday call alma mater will actually teach him to read.
All-night sushi bars and Sarah Jessica Parker sightings are nice
and all, but in the end, decent, affordable schools are the real
It thing.
Wall Street Journal
Urban Mama Chic
By Kay S. Hymowitz
Read the Commentary
Kotkin does not waste a word.
You can read The City
in an afternoon, but if you are interested in cities, and the great debate about how to ensure their success, you will turn to it for reference again and again.
You will get your money’s worth.
Centre for Resource
Management Studies
New Zealand
Book Review: The City – A global history, by Joel
Kotkin
By Owen McShane
Read the Commentary
When Studio City
entertainment lawyer Susan Rabin told her daughter that she
planned to attend a convention for Jewish Republicans,
her liberal offspring told her to have fun with “the other
Jewish Republican.” Little
did she know....
The Jewish Journal of
Los Angeles
Lincoln’s Party Parties
by Marc Ballon
Read the Commentary
Kotkin
reports: "Some 400,000 E.U. science and technology
graduates currently reside in the United States, and barely one
in seven, according to a recent European Commission poll, intend
to return." It's not only the best brains who migrate to
our country; poor people come as well. There's one important
difference between the world's poor who come to America and
those who go to Europe. The poor tend to prosper much more here
than they do in Europe. American success and European jealousy
might explain some of their anti-Americanism, particularly
virulent among Europe's elite.
Townhall.com
Leftist hate for America
By Walter E. Williams
Read the Commentary
The fact is, suburbs may be mocked, but they are the preferred form of living.
The 1990s were hailed as a decade of renaissance for big cities after decades of decline. Urban core cities in the 50 largest metropolitan areas gained 3 million people. At the same time, however, suburbs in those metros added 17 million.
The Kansas City Star
RATING THE BURBS:An in-depth
look at the places we call home
Sizing up the suburbs: A quest for the best
By Jeffrey Spivak
Read the Commentary
Kotkin
doubts middle-class riders will trade their cars for buses in
great numbers in the long run. But he still thinks the Orange
Line should be extended to crisscross the Valley and go out to
Thousand Oaks - since busways are so much cheaper than rail
lines. The Orange Line's original plans included similar
north-south busways near Canoga Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard.
"We are a dispersed urban region and what we need are
transit alternatives for that part of the population that needs
it," he said.
Los Angeles Daily News
Busway changes our lives
Busway changing lifestyles in Valley
By Lisa Mascaro
Read the Commentary
Meet
the future of suburbia. Urban geographer Joel Kotkin envisions
it as an archipelago of self-contained villages featuring lively
cores full of shops and office space. They will be ringed by
clusters of homes grouped on pedestrian-friendly streets and
surrounded by verdant parks. The residents would rarely venture
into the big city nearby because everything they need would be
within walking distance.
CanWest News Service
The burbs, without the barbs
Geographer's vision
By Charles Mandel
Read the Commentary
The
City: A Global History succeeds in relaying the lofty
ambitions of its title by combining history with Kotkin’s
analysis. At the beginning of the book, he lays out a seven-page
chronology of the history of cities that alone provides a wealth
of information. Kotkin’s writing is concise, and every word
seems to have been chosen to convey knowledge. Aspiring urban
scholars, former urban scholars in need of a refresher course,
and anyone with even a passing interest in the urban built form
will find The City: A Global History to be a virtual
encyclopedia of cities, packaged neatly in a compact book.
Urban Land
Howard Kozloff
Read the Commentary
The 1980s were the period
when, New York area companies like IBM and AT&T, which had
dominated their industries, lost out to Silicon Valley. It was a
time, notes urban analyst Joel Kotkin, when the Port of Los
Angeles surpassed the Port of New York as trade with Asia
overtook trade with Europe.
New York Sun
The Mayor Who Brought The City Back From the Brink
Exhibitions
By Fred Siegel
Read the Commentary
Kotkin said cities,
homebuilders and economic development officials would be wise to
target mobile workers in their 30s, a formative time when many
adults start to get serious about setting down roots, buying
homes and starting families. "Once someone in their 30s
moves, they tend to stay," he said.
Charleston Post and
Courier
Lure the mobile, futurist says
By John P. McDermott
Read the Commentary
The great cultural
capitals of the past, whether ancient Athens, Alexandria,
Venice, Amsterdam, or London, were first mercantile (and
sometimes military) powerhouses. Commercial success led to
conditions that attracted and stimulated the best artists. It
was the cities' great affluence that produced their great art,
not the other way around. This was true of New York as
well.
Gotham Gazette
Is New York The Cultural Capital Of The World?
By Jonathan Mandell
Read the Commentary
Some have questioned whether the deal is in the best interest of taxpayers, and whether enough new convention business can be generated to justify the expense."I keep asking, 'Why are we building this hotel?" If we have a white elephant of a Convention Center, which everyone agrees to, then why are we building this hotel?" said Joel Kotkin of the New American Foundation.
Los Angeles Times
L.A. will get a new luxury hotel
By Rick Orlov
Read the Commentary
Kotkin and others
believe the Orange Line, like most bus lines in the city, will
fill a need for low-income workers and students. But, he adds,
it won't do much to unclog the 101 — or even nearby surface
streets, such as Ventura, Victory and Van Nuys boulevards.
Los Angeles Times
Is a Busway the Valley Way?
The region's Orange Line is ready to roll but some wonder if it
will do much to curtail traffic.
By Amanda Covarrubias
Read the Commentary
But
despite all the disquieting passions and the misguided belief
that saying "no" would force The Donald to take his
high-rise project downtown, the majority of the council did the
right thing. There is a wealth of academic product on the value
of encouraging infill (read: vertical) development in popular
urban environments, from Jane Jacobs and Neal Peirce to Joel
Kotkin. There are a host of real-world examples of big cities
with multiple high-density nodes, including many in the Sun
Belt.
The Arizona Republic
High-rise decision for good of city
By Doug MacEachern
Read the Commentary
The typically astute Kotkin has some good insights here, but there is one reason today's liberals cannot return to the old Progressivism: That Progressivism was based on a dynamic view of history, as its name implies. There is no turning back from the Progressive agenda of replacing politics with administration, competition with expertise, amateurs with academics, and ultimately freedom with bureaucracy.
The Claremont Institute's Center for Local Government
Kotkin's Defense of Progressivism
By Ken Masugi
Read the Commentary
The San Francisco
earthquake and fire of 1906 was even more devastating, killing
thousands (Chinese fatalities were not originally counted). Yet,
local leaders promised a better future. A Bank of Italy
executive shipped lumber to the city's Italian community.
Reconstruction work touched off an economic boom. Add to
the list of recovery factors an intangible: spirit. "Cities
will themselves to be great," said Joel Kotkin, an urban
affairs specialist. "It's an underappreciated factor."
International Herald Tribune
Letter from America: For Louisiana, lessons in
staging a comeback
By Brian Knowlton
Read the Commentary
The lure of
"coolness" leads cities to ignore the fundamental
issues—infrastructure, middle-class flight, terrorism—that
have so much more to do with their long-term prospects. Cities
once boasted of their thriving middle-class neighborhoods,
churches, warehouses, factories and high-rise office towers.
Today they set their value by their inventory of jazz clubs, gay
bars, art museums, luxury hotels and condos.
Isthmus Daily Page
Cool on "cool cities"
By Jason Joyce
Read the Commentary
From
horseback riding in the San Fernando Valley to wooing passengers
on the Metro Red Line subway, Villaraigosa has transformed
himself into a constant media presence, flashing his megawatt
smile and shaking every available hand in each room that he
enters — a stark departure from the man he defeated, former
Mayor James Hahn. But
in the messier arena of public policy, Villaraigosa has left a
more ambiguous 100-day record, putting his mark on the airport
and harbor while hewing a more nuanced path on such
controversial issues as schools and employee salaries.
Daily Breeze
Villaraigosa's first hundred days are open to debate
While the new Los Angeles mayor has been personable, some say
he's sent mixed signals when it comes to schools and DWP
salaries.
By David Zahniser
Read the Commentary
We're on the verge of
making many, many misplaced mistakes," Kotkin said. For
example, instead of the city of Los Angeles spending millions of
dollars to subsidize a downtown hotel development, he said
municipal leaders could hire more police officers, thereby
fulfilling one of the three elements needed for a thriving city,
security. "The decline of safety has probably destroyed
more American cities than any single factor," Kotkin said.
Daily Breeze
Threats to economy examined
Suggestions on ways to maintain the quality of South Bay life
and boost business are discussed at conference.
By Muhammed El-Hasan
Read the Commentary
Sprawl
is getting better, Kotkin says—more dense, and eventually
featuring a better mix of uses, with stores and workplaces
closer to homes. Kotkin predicts more of these kinds of suburban
villages, which he calls ''the new suburbanism," a
deliberate echo of the New Urbanism. With the help of
technology, more people will be able to work from home or closer
to home. Car trips will still be necessary, but they could be
shorter and done using hybrid and energy-efficient vehicles.
Boston Globe
The virtues of sprawl
Sprawl isn't what it used to be, some experts contend. Is it
time we stopped worrying and learned to love the
subdivision?
By Anthony Flint
Read the Commentary
Joel
Kotkin, among the nation's leading writers on urban affairs,
finds in the past four weeks "two different governmental
responses to disaster, one efficient, the other, frankly,
disastrous." The New Orleans "establishment," he
writes, was "lulled to sleep" in the face of a
predictable, looming disaster - spending not on shoring up
levees but on frivolities. In contrast Houston, with foresight,
"has been industrious, building elaborate drainage, sewer,
flood, and other systems to handle the delivery and control of
water into the metropolis."
Townhall.com
Random walk On the court, Katrina, Jane, Cindy, two cities,
two magazines, etc.
By Ross Mackenzie
Read the Commentary
The mayor told a crowd
estimated by city police to be 2,000 that the cost of a college
education is up by 40 percent, fewer working Marylanders have
health insurance, and state taxes and fees have been increased
by more than $1 billion. "I
submit to you, sadly, that Maryland is adrift, and it's time to
get Maryland moving again, because we know a stronger Maryland
can do better," O'Malley said.
WBOC - Baltimore
O'Malley Opens Primary Campaign in Montgomery Co., Baltimore
Read the Commentary
Three
things can happen in New Orleans," Kotkin said. "The
first is Disneyfication: They rebuild the tourist areas and hope
some of the poor people don't come back. The second option is
what I call Gaza on the Gulf: They build massive amounts of
cheap public housing. The third would be to get the people from
New Orleans involved. Use the reconstruction to get them into
the construction industry, learn skills and create a new middle
class."
Hartford Courant
Gimmicks Won't Save Cities - Leadership, Focus Will
Tom Condon
Read the Commentary
This
is an effort to transform the gulf region, which had become a
disaster zone of urban liberalism. All around the South, cities
are booming, but New Orleans never did. All around the country,
crime was dropping, but in New Orleans it was rising. Immigrants
were flowing across the land in search of opportunity, but as
Joel Kotkin has observed, few were interested in New Orleans.
The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
A Bushian Laboratory
By David Brooks
Read the Commentary
"People want to
know whether a place is a credible first-world city," Mr.
Kotkin said. "What they found in New Orleans was that
underneath the gloss and facade of a first-world tourist
attraction was a third-world reality. It will take a lot of work
to erase that view."
The New York Times
Post-Katrina, Bricks and Mortals
By Clifford J. Levy
Read the Commentary
Environmentalists,
developers and urban planners will push hard "to create a
more compact and frankly a more expensive city" as they
remake New Orleans, demographer Joel Kotkin predicted. "The
places that had been home to the working class and the poor will
probably not be redeveloped." Even if a family has the
resources to rebuild, if relatives and neighbors have moved on
and familiar stores have been razed, "they have less reason
to stay,"
Los Angeles Times
KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
Far From Home, They Feel
They've Arrived
By Stephanie Simon
Read the Commentary
The sheer scale of
"L.A. Live" — a 4-million-square-foot megaproject
—
has been greeted with hyperbole from the city's political
elites, who say its movie premieres, Grammy Awards ceremonies
and an ESPN West Coast headquarters will make it a global draw.
Boosters of the project
say it will meet two key goals — stopping the bleeding at the
financially struggling Convention Center, and luring much-needed
amenities to a downtown that, after years of decay, is starting
to percolate with new lofts, condos and nightspots.
Daily Breeze
'L.A. Live' promoters tout 'Times Square West'
By David Zahniser
Read the Commentary
The
city's Convention & Visitors Bureau has opened an office in
Baton Rouge, where New Orleans business owners have discussed
plans to reopen attractions in the French Quarter and other
relatively unscathed parts of the city's restaurant and
entertainment district, perhaps by the end of the year. But even
by then, says urban historian Joel Kotkin, tens of thousands of
tourists and conventioneers will have been redirected to other
destinations.
USA TODAY
Dreams are emerging of a 'new' New Orleans
By Richard Willing
Read the Commentary
One
point of agreement among all the experts is the unsentimental
observation that New Orleans can't be a charity case forever. It
must have an economic reason for being. To be blunt, it needs
jobs — preferably high-paying ones. Even before Katrina, New
Orleans' population was too big in relation to the size of its
economic engine, which is why unemployment was high and incomes
low, especially among the black majority.
Business Week
SPECIAL REPORT: KATRINA: THE AFTERMATH
The Big Questions About the Big Easy
How to resurrect ravaged New Orleans? Is Houston the model, or
post-9/11 New York, or even Venice? Given its crime, corruption,
and the likely cost, is it even worth trying?
By Peter Coy
Read the Commentary
The job ahead, beyond the immediate task of rescuing those still trapped, fixing the levees whose breaches inundated the city and pumping out the water and recovering an unknown number of human bodies, is almost too daunting to contemplate. Whether it's rebuilding or relocation, it will be years before a semblance of normality
— even New Orleans normality, which was always a bit more exotic than anywhere else in the country
— can return.
Fort Wayne
News-Sentinel
EDITORIAL
Can New Orleans rally and rebuild?
Read the Commentary
But some experts doubt that traditional mainstays like high tech will once again become major job generators. Global competition and outsourcing have made companies wary about hiring. Leaps in worker productivity are keeping payrolls slim even as conditions improve.
Sacramento Bee
Built on the boom: More than ever, jobs, wealth tied to real
estate
Soaring home prices keep the area thriving, but many see danger
in that dependence
By Dale Kasler
Joel Kotkin, pointed
out on the BBC recently, cities that base their economies
uniquely on tourism "do not do well". Of course, the
tourism industry’s robustness can temporarily buoy an economy
marred by the decline of the sugar and textile industries, but
we must be weary of over-dependency. Especially if the behemoth
of unplanned development continues to rush forth, thus turning
our beaches into tired backdrops of parking lots and shopping
malls.
L'Express
Big blue, not Apple
By Nicholas Rainer
Read the Commentary
Kotkin est aussi de ces
penseurs, futuristes et autres qui ont cette capacité hors du
commun de « lire » les espaces urbains au point de remettre en
question les théories et concepts des plus grands
universitaires et ce, tout en faisant avancer certaines
disciplines.
INRS-Urbanisation, Culture et Société
La « nouvelle géographie » de Joel Kotkin : un modèle pour comprendre la morphologie urbaine des villes du savoir 1
Rémy Tremblay
Read the Commentary
Requires
Adobe Reader
But
beyond the city known to tourists, [New Orleans is] a place
riven by class and race; of its 485,000 people, 67% are African
American, many of them poor. The city they knew was already
fraying at its foundation, its history crowded with a long line
of buccaneers in public office offering dreams with one hand
while pilfering with the other. The rebuilding effort, which
will involve tough decisions about what and where to rebuild and
about which places get funding first, is sure to bring all those
problems into sharp relief.
Time
Rebuilding A Dream
How do you put back a city and a region so devastated? The same
way? Differently?
By Richard Lacayo
Read the Commentary
If
New Orleans was where the Third World broke through, Houston was
where the First World began beating it back, and asserting its
primacy. Are we surprised that the star of this show has been
Texas, home of Karl Rove and both Bushes, widely despised by the
glitterati as sub-literate, biased, oppressive, and retrograde?
No.
Daily Standard
A Two-City Tale
New Orleans and Houston offer a study in contrasts.
By Noemie Emery
Read the Commentary
Consider this, for example: When China exports shoes, garments and electronics, it spreads wealth among its lower-class semi-skilled people. When India exports software, it spreads wealth mostly among the elite.
When the elite become disconnected with other social groups, the community withers away.
The Statesman
Cyber Age
Of human bonds in the digital age
By N. D. Batra
Read the Commentary
Can
something approximating the footprint of the pre-Katrina New
Orleans be restored and protected or should the city cede to
nature some neighborhoods, many of them poorer neighborhoods,
that proved particularly vulnerable last week? Those lucky
enough to get out were part of a vast exodus that has spread New
Orleans residents across the South and beyond. Plans for the
city's future rest in part on how many of them will return and
how many will seek lives elsewhere.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
New Orleans will be reborn an altered city
By James O'Toole
Read the Commentary
On a ici une conjoncture parfaite de catastrophe politique : face à l'ouragan et l'inondation, on a combiné l'indifférence du gouvernement avec la corruption et l'incompétence des autorités locales. A La Nouvelle-Orléans, on n'a pas un Giuliani après le 11 septembre à New York ou un Jeb Bush face à l'ouragan en
Floride.
Liberation
Cyclone. Joel Kotkin, historien, évoque la paupérisation
des Noirs de Louisiane: «Il ne restait que ceux qui n'avaient
pas les moyens de partir»
Par Annette Levy-Willard
Read the Commentary
Increasingly,
service-sector jobs provide the foundation for Idaho and the other mountain
states - Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. Where old industries work the
land, these urban ones mine a rising population in fields such as
healthcare, education, and architecture. "Growth is itself a
spur," says Mr. Kotkin. "If you're a dentist, there are more teeth
to fill. If you're an accountant, there are more taxes to examine."
The Christian Science
Monitor
In cities of Mountain West, a new model for growth
The lower cost of living and high quality of life attract
residents.
By Mark Trumbull
Read the Commentary
Serves
to illustrate the background to one of the major problems of our time - and
contains important lessons for those who will have to manage our cities in
the future."
The Financial Times
Sacred, safe, busy
By Crispin Tickell
Read the Commentary
What
used to be known as the nation's Grain Belt is increasingly
becoming our Brain Belt," Kotkin said. "New York City,
San Jose and Los Angeles still provide most of our cultural
content and many of the most prized innovations. But more and
more, the country's competitive edge in practical economics this
century will come from previously unlikely places like Sioux
Falls, Des Moines and Fargo."
Baton Rouge Advocate
BR should eye 'bright flight' trend for future
By Lanny Keller
Read the Commentary
A few years
ago, cities wanted to be wired. Now it’s all about being
wireless. Tempe is at the forefront of what is going to be the
next big thing in municipal oneupmanship: Making your entire
city a WiFi hot spot. Tempe likely will become the first city in
the United States with border-to-border access to high-speed,
wireless Internet.
East Valley Tribune
Business Update
Cities rush to expand wireless access
By Tom Gibbons
Read the Commentary
Kotkin
is unimpressed by our current plight. "I wouldn't shed too
many tears for San Diego. Most cities would give their first
born to have what you have," he says. San Diego's basics
– climate, technology, strategic location – remain strong.
"No one has put salt in the earth" as the Romans did
to Carthage, he adds. "And even that did not destroy
Carthage. In short, stop whining and get to work."
San Diego Union-Tribune
Brink-dancing under the sun
By Richard Louv
Read the Commentary
Public subsidies have long been a vehicle used by local government to revive struggling areas, from New York's Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard. But it's difficult to compare the Grand Avenue project to other recent developers because it is so much larger and is being built on several different plots of public land.
Los Angeles Times
Aid but No Subsidy for Grand Ave
Downtown deal relies on government help, while questions remain
about financial return. County supervisors will vote on the plan
today.
By Cara Mia DiMassa
Read the Commentary
Buying
an older home and then demolishing it to rebuild a larger home
is an increasingly attractive financial option to buyers over
finding a bigger home in newer communities that are farther
away,..."This is driven by the price of land elsewhere, the
choice of people not to live so far from employment, changing
ways of American life by Americans, and the desire for
immigrants to design their own dream," says Joel Kotkin,
author of several books on urban development.
The Christian Science Monitor
When big is too big, even in L.A.
The city approves one neighborhood's move to block mammoth homes
on small plots.
By Daniel B. Wood
Read the Commentary
Joel Kotkin, author of The
City: A Global History and a noted expert in political and
economic trends, says Charlotte and other growing cities often
fall into the trap of emphasizing sizzle at the expense of more
mundane but crucial concerns. "Hipness, coolness and high
culture are never going to be Charlotte's competitive
advantages," he says. "So why go there with public
dollars? You're better off strengthening what helped you grow in
the first place -- livability, affordability and so on."
Charlotte Business Journal
City is piling up debt, but more projects possible
By Erik Spanberg
Read the Commentary
Ovrom
said the mayor has a clear sense of what the various parts of
the city need and is committed to providing the leadership
needed to generate economic development in the Valley and other
areas -- and not just downtown and the few other areas that have
received most of the city's effort in the past. "You're
surely going to see us having the marching orders of putting at
least 40 percent if not more of the emphasis on economic
development in the Valley.
Los Angeles Daily News
Ovrom is a true believer in L.A.'s economic future
By Beth Barrett
Read the Commentary
If
you look at the history of almost everything man has achieved,
if you take the 3,000- or 4,000-year perspective, almost
everything that has been created that is ennobling -- most
religious ideas, certainly scientific innovation, art, culture
-- has been the product of an urban culture. When you follow the
history of human evolution from the perspective of the
civilization, it's largely a history of cities."
Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review
Build on what you've got
By Bill Steigerwald
Read the Commentary
As
middle-class families retreat from the urban scene, a vital
spirit of community mission is being lost in many places. And
the result, as Kotkin sees it, is likely to be unpleasant.
Without a shared civic identity, some of today's great cities
may soon follow Carthage onto the dusty backlot of world
history.
The Washington Post
Urban Life
Metropolis Rising
Reviewed by Gary Krist
Read the Commentary
Kotkin,
who has long theorized that the 465-square-mile city is simply
too big, says staying close to home isn't necessarily a bad
thing. He points to
the creation of vibrant, self-sustaining neighborhoods seen
across L.A., each with its own great restaurants and shopping
areas that give Angelenos a sense of place. "L.A., it's too
big and needs to be broken down into constituent parts. Even if
we're not doing it politically, we're doing it in terms of our
lives."
Los Angeles Daily News
Traffic a gridlock on life
Too little road, too many cars hamper Angelenos
By Lisa Mascaro
Read the Commentary
To
maintain growth, cities must constantly market to new
"recruits" among singles, empty-nesters and retirees.
You have to wonder if some cities can sustain this. Most
urban-dwelling singles will pair off, have children, and move to
the suburbs. Empty-nesters and retirees can only "age in
place" for so long. Cities that do not welcome children
could stagnate and decline again.
Denver Post
Perspective
Our cities need kids
Young families are heading to the suburbs
By Hank Baker
Read the Commentary
Kotkin claims that any
urban revival strategy based principally on being
"hip" will ultimately fail because economic growth is
shifting to less fashionable but more livable locales, like the
suburbs and Sunbelt metropolises. For Kotkin, catchphrases like
"family friendly" and "affordable" supplant
Florida's "bohemian" and "tolerant"
conditions for economic growth.
Denver Post
Guest Commentary
Creatives take to the suburbs
By Patrick Holmes, Colorado Springs
Read the Commentary
People
in other parts of the country are taking note of the growth in
Sioux Falls and Lincoln County, said Joel Kotkin, a Los
Angeles-based senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a
research group. He
said crowding and lack of affordable housing on the coasts have
renewed interested in the Upper Midwest. "The perception of
these rural places as backward is changing," Kotkin said.
"People are finding new reasons other than growing wheat to
move to the Plains.
Argus Leader
Lincoln housing growth 6th in nation
But boom might bust when easy-to-develop land runs out
By Sam Burrish
Read the Commentary
What
L.A. has is an economy that has a very strong ethnic component
which is both tied to the global economy, but also has people
who are willing to, in many cases, sacrifice more than
native-born Americans in the building of businesses. You look
throughout the L.A. economy and there are large sectors – you
know, garment is certainly one – if you go to many retail
businesses, there is really the willingness of immigrants to
work extraordinarily long hours and save lots of money that make
it far more possible for L.A. to be competitive.
Los Angeles City Beat
Joel Kotkin
The Los Angeles-based urbanist on the real possibilities and
false promises looming on the city’s horizon
By Perry Crowe
Read the Commentary
The United States, Florida warns,
can't count on being the mecca for the highly educated forever--especially as
more people of talent around the world gain more options to choose from.
''Whatever country manages to attract...highly mobile students," Florida
writes, ''will have a huge long-run advantage in the burgeoning global
competition for talent."
Boston Globe - July 17, 2005
IN THE COMMONWEALTH
Bright flight
Is the Bay State's vaunted 'creative class' coming or going?
By Robert David Sullivan
Read the Commentary
In addition to the jaywalking crackdown, District officials also are enforcing restrictions on tinted car windows and cyclists running red lights. Intersection monitors are posted at key gridlock points during rush hour. Jersey barriers surround many formerly accessible buildings in the city while surveillance cameras watch overhead. Children in vehicles must be strapped into car seats until age 8. District leaders are considering a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants...."In reaction to the lawlessness of the past, there is a
sense that any expression of spontaneity has been wiped out," said Joel Kotkin, author of
The City: A Global History. "You don't want people smoking crack on K Street, but you have to wonder at what point do you feel like you're in Disneyland."
The Washington Post
D.C.'s List Of Don'ts Grating on Some Nerves
Official Defends Safety Crackdowns
By Eric M. Weiss
Read the Commentary
In his first act after
being sworn into office July 1, Villaraigosa removed five
lobbyists who served as city commissioners. He followed that up
last Tuesday with an appeal to the City Council to adopt a
series of ethics reforms, created his own in-house ethics czar
and signed an executive order to require his staff and all
department heads to sign an ethics pledge.
Los Angeles Daily
News
Mayor zipping along in Week 1
By Rick Orlov
Read the Commentary
Les
villes qui ceinturent Montréal traînent depuis longtemps la
réputation d'être de véritables dortoirs, tout comme,
d'ailleurs, les banlieues de Toronto et d'innombrables autres
grandes villes nord-américaines. On y vit mais on n'y travaille
pas. Or le mythe ne tient pas toujours et certaines d'entre
elles évoluent à un rythme qui ferait rougir bien des villes
centres, dit le professeur américain Joel Kotkin, spécialiste
de l'évolution des centres urbains et auteur de The City, a
Global History. Après une modeste genèse consistant à
n'offrir que du logement
abordable, les banlieues ont pris de la maturité pour vivre
aujourd'hui l'étape suivante consistant à créer de l'emploi.
Et pas seulement dans l'aménagement paysager.
ÉCONOMIE
Les défis de la banlieue Les banlieues ont pris de la maturité et vivent aujourd'hui l'étape consistant à créer de l'emploi
par François Desjardins
Read the Commentary
"I remember when Bakersfield went through its last boom, when the price of oil went up in 1974," said demographic researcher Joel Kotkin, author of
The City: A Global History. "I called it an Okie Abu Dhabi," he said. "It was a place very distinct from Los Angeles, and the notion of Bakersfield as kind of an extension of Los Angeles was unthinkable. But now it's becoming part of the L.A. solar system."
Los Angeles Times
Bakersfield Comes Into Full Boom
Low-cost housing attracts many new residents to the San Joaquin Valley community, fueling a new era of economic growth.
By Daryl Kelley
Read the Commentary
Joel
Kotkin, who has written a book on the history of cities, said
communities based on the principles of New Urbanism are not
always friendly places for families. New Urbanism, he notes,
calls mainly for condominiums and town homes stacked on top of
retail shops. "These types of development call for housing
with small back yards or no back yards," he said. "For
me and my family, our back yard is our sanctuary."
The Whittier Daily News
New Urbanism blends church, community
By Marshall Allen and Ben Baeder
Read the Commentary
Thirty-six
of the USA's 251 current largest cities lost population in the
1990s, but 68 have declined this decade. Among them are Chicago
and Boston, two cities that were often described as turnaround
stories in the 1990s. Scores of other cities — including
Phoenix, Austin and Denver — are still growing but at slower
rates.
USA Today
Big-city booms now look like blips
By Larry Copeland and Barbara Hansen
Read the Commentary
The dot-com decline
blasted cities such as San Francisco and Boston. Other cities
have experienced job losses, and municipal red tape often
hinders start-up entrepreneurs, says Joel Kotkin, senior fellow
at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
"The notion of the resurgence of the inner city was being
overstated," he says. "In Philadelphia, for example,
Center City is better than it's ever been. But the rest of the
city is losing jobs and population."
USA Today
Out-migration cools talk of inner-city resurgences
By Larry Copeland and Barbara Hansen
Read the Commentary
What
makes a great city? Kotkin, author of an intriguing book,
"The City: A Global History," is big on solid
infrastructure, good schools and a vibrant middle class. Cities
can't exist merely as cultural hubs filled with trendy art
galleries and funky restaurants. Sure, those features enrich
communities, make life interesting, but vibrant cities don't
live on art alone.
Chicago Tribune
Sacred, safe and busy
Editorial
Read the Commentary
He can't twitch his
nose and make the perpetual rush hour on our freeways disappear.
He can't turn the public schools around (though he is making
noises about trying). He probably can't stop your job from being
outsourced to India. "It doesn't really matter who's
mayor," said urban expert Joel Kotkin, who lives in Valley
Village. "It's almost that Villaraigosa is more exciting as
an idea than as an individual."
Los Angeles Times
He's gotten our attention
Now Villaraigosa will try to stir an electorate that has historically taken an apathetic view toward its leaders.
By Robin Abcarian
Read the Commentary
Several other of the large Internet and new-media companies based in Northern California's Silicon Valley also have been finding their way 380 miles south to
Tinseltown. While Silicon Valley safely retains its status as the world's tech capital, about 20 square miles in and near Los Angeles is quickly evolving into the digital media capital.
Investor's Business Daily
Tinseltown Turns More Techie, Gets Digital Media Starring Role
By Brian Deagon
Read the Commentary
Kotkin
noted that with development of telecommunications, small towns
in the West are now on equal footing with large cities in terms
of economic opportunity and desirability. "The great
advantage of the big city was the monopoly of information,"
he said. "That monopoly of information has been broken. ...
Small towns can compete in a way that was never before
possible."
Denver Post
Governors work on economy
By Steve Lipsher
Read the Commentary
Joel Kotkin writes that
the most important work of cities -- and the determinant of
their success -- remains what it has historically been:
"the transformation of newcomers to America into
successful, middle-class citizens." I don't know about
other cities, but in Dallas' case, he's right.
Dallas Morning News
Dallas' future depends on a strong middle class
By Victoria Loe Hicks
Read the Commentary
“I think what we're
seeing is that we can have technology in places like Montana and
North Dakota because of broadband, because of the ability to
communicate rapidly,” author and futurist Joel Kotkin told the
western leaders. “We can move primary technology from a place
like Silicon Valley to Phoenix because Phoenix has portability,
they have technologists who are available, they have the ability
for innovation, they have broadband so it doesn't have to be in
Silicon Valley.”
KUTV Salt Lake City
Western Governors Meet In Colorado
Read the Commentary
According to United
Nations experts, the next few months will mark a momentous
shift: For the first time in history, a majority of the planet's
population will be living in cities. This isn't just a
demographic milestone, it's a revolution. A century ago, just
one in seven of the world's people lived in cities. Within 20
years, that number will rise to four of every seven humans.
Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY
Don't Let L.A. Be the GM of Cities
By Rick Cole
Read the Commentary
merican
mayors haven't yet built anything quite like the Circus Maximus,
where a quarter of a million Romans watched chariot races, but
their combined output makes it look puny. They've endowed
downtowns with stadiums, arenas, theaters, concert halls,
museums and aquariums. They imagine drawing hordes of
out-of-towners to the new convention center, and when the
visitors don't materialize, the mayors' solution is to build an
even bigger convention center with a subsidized hotel next door.
The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
The Circus Maximus Syndrome
By John Tierney
Read the Commentary
Los
Angeles has in its roots and its future a tremendous role for
Latinos. But I think it's a polyglot future. Latino culture will
be a big part. But the Asian element is powerful. The Jewish
element will continue to be powerful. I think L.A. is going to
be this experimental post-ethnic city. As long as there
continues to be opportunity, L.A. is going to transcend
ethnicities.
Los Angeles Times
Babylon, Byzantium, Los Angeles
For one expert, the Southland's vitality is no urban myth
By Abel Salas
Read the Commentary
"Cities
no longer have the monopoly on culture. As people have moved to
the suburbs, they have brought culture with them. Jobs and
educated people are moving to smaller towns and suburbs. With
technology, corporate headquarters and large institutions no
longer have to be in big cities, it’s the proximity to an
airport that is important.”
Blue E-zine
The Future of Rocky Mountain
Cities
How can an economy thrive in a “lifestyle” region?
Conversations with Urban Futurists, Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin
By Susan
Holden Walsh
Read the Commentary
Requires
Adobe Reader
The
challenge for megacities is that they're competing with places
that are smaller and more manageable - and from which people can
telecommute. With diverse eateries and culture spreading to
smaller towns and suburbs, there's less reason to stay in
cities.
The Christian Science Monitor
Interview/ Joel Kotkin
The secret to a thriving city is not what you may think
By Kim Campbell
Read the Commentary
Joel Kotkin, an urban affairs expert at the New America Foundation, cautioned that a good deal of Villaraigosa's victory could be attributed to the troubles of incumbent Mayor James Hahn and his loss of the coalition that originally backed him. The city's Latino electorate, which gave 84 percent of its vote to Villaraigosa, has also surged in recent years, Kotkin noted.
"There was kind of a perfect storm for Antonio," he said.
Daily Breeze
Villaraigosa steps into the national politics spotlight
By Toby Eckert
Read the Commentary
Joel
Kotkin, an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation, said the
report fails to tackle regulatory issues and the steep housing
prices that drive business out of California -- or talk about
the kinds of blue-collar jobs that many businesses need. "The
absolute essential is going to be how we grow the economy, and
how does California compete? Having educated people per se does
not get it done if they don't have the jobs and can't afford to
live there."
Los Angeles Daily News
Cal's future shock
Report predicts resource shortage
By Lisa Mascaro
Read the Commentary
"The big thing is
you have got to figure out why people stay there, why they leave
and then try to address those issues," says Kotkin.
"Find out specifically what the reality is in your area.
Any region is like a person. You have to know it's history, its
places, its historic evolution and characteristics. There is no
one theory that applies to every place in the sense of what
strategies work best."
Northeast PA Business Journal
A temporary exodus
Region's exit a revolving door, not a one-way street
By: Kathy Ruff
Read the Commentary
Kotkin's
conclusion is that without thriving churches and public school
systems and affordable housing for middle-class families and
immigrants, cities will not be able to recapture their role as
cultural, social and economic crossroads -- "sacred
places" that foster a genuine sense of community and shared
experience.
Washington Post
Readings
Read the Commentary
In Tribes,
author Joel Kotkin described the emergence of cosmopolitan
global tribes, defining them as international communities that
combine a strong sense of a common origin with “two critical
factors for success in the modern world: geographic dispersion
and a belief in scientific progress.” Kotkin’s primary
examples included the Jews, Chinese and Indians. These groups,
relying on mutual dependence and trust, created global networks
that allowed them “to function collectively beyond the
confines of national or regional borders.” In
later writings, Kotkin added Vietnamese to the list.
Asian Week
Vietnamese Diaspora is Thriving
By Andrew Lam
Read the Commentary
Continuity of rule at
City Hall, Kotkin said, has given Chicago an advantage over
cities such as Los Angeles and New York. He noted the protracted
fighting over the future of the World Trade Center site in
Manhattan. "In Chicago, Ground Zero would probably be
rebuilt already or at least construction would have begun by
now," Kotkin said.
Chicago Tribune
Daley--Canada's kind of boss
Far from his troubles, mayor has following
By Dan Mihalopoulos
Read the Commentary
Although Florida and Kotkin didn't
tackle this issue head-on in their Denver debate, their differences are clear
enough. Florida believes nations such as Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland,
Sweden, the Netherlands are poised to attract a proportionately greater share
of the world's "creative class" than the United States.
Rocky Mountain News
On Point: Brown the barometer
By Vincent Carroll
Read the Commentary
Kotkin
is more skeptical of the smart-growth impulse and warns
policy-makers against "the attempt to demonize the
single-family home, to say that it's a bad idea. "The
more that we make it hard to get a single-family home in Region
A," he adds, "people move to Region B."
Rocky Mountain News
On Point: Bipartisan triumph?
By Vincent Carroll
Read the Commentary
Florida and Kotkin kept
the crowd enthralled, but they also spent too much time
complimenting each other and straining to express agreement when
both knew perfectly well that their differences are profound.
Rocky Mountain News
On Point: Pot, meet kettle
By Vincent Carroll
Read the Commentary
That more traditional
suburban house is still the biggest draw for Southland
residents.Demographic researcher Joel Kotkin, author of
"The City: A Global History," says there's a reason so
many people are willing to commute."As long as people
continue to move into Southern California, at least some of them
will always want a single-family house with a backyard," he
said, " and that is in the suburbs."
The Los Angeles Times
Home Builders Looking Inward
By Daniel Yi
Read the Commentary
Los Angeles city and
county officials Monday approved plans for a cluster of
high-rise towers, parks, shopping centers and entertainment
venues around Walt Disney Concert Hall, declaring that the Grand
Avenue project would bring an urban heart to a city that has
long been without one.
The Los Angeles Times
THE STATE
Grand Plan Approved to Give
L.A. a Heart
By Cara Mia DiMassa
Read the Commentary
The
City offers fascinating insight into the ideologies that
have created different city designs, and into the natural human
desire to gather together to live and for commerce.
The Orange County Register
Hip cities without a soul
By Steven Greenhut
Read the Commentary
It's reasonable to ask: How, will a city like Denver, which boasts about its high number of college graduates, resolve its shameful public high school dropout rate? What should we make of revitalized downtowns like LoDo that don't figure children into their design? What about the have/ have-not divide that exists between the first-tier and more community-based cultural institutions?
Denver Post
"Creative class" sparks creative debate
By Lisa Kennedy
Read the Commentary
"I feel a little
like someone introducing a fight," said the mayor to more
than 500 people in the Donald R. Seawell Ballroom attending a
program that was part of the C3 Culture Commerce Community
conference. "In that corner, Joel Kotkin . . . Instead, the
discussion of what makes cities great became a near-meeting of
the minds between two writers who for years have toiled in the
arena of culture, societal shifts and the economy.
Rocky Mountain News
Economic sparring match turns to meeting of minds
Authors share ideas about cities and the challenges they face
By Mary Voelz Chandler
Read the Commentary
Some skeptics, noting the high condo prices and the out-of-town provenance of buyers, fear that instead of the diverse, working 24-hour downtown that city leaders envision, the boom will instead create a seasonal playground for the rich, a Monte Carlo on Biscayne Bay.
''I bet those buildings are going to be empty a lot of the time,'' said Joel Kotkin, an urban historian and consultant who has written about the rise of what he calls ''ephemeral cities'' -- places like San Francisco, Berlin and parts of New York that increasingly cater to the rich, the childless young and tourists.
Miami Herald
High-rises, high hopes
A frenzy of condo-building will remake much of Miami in this decade. The likely result: a new skyline, more congestion and more wealth
By Andres Viglucci and Matthew Haggman
Read the Commentary
After
evaluating the resort community, Kotkin predicts the exodus from
Tahoe could shift as people insist more on moving permanently to
vacation spots." This is the kind of thing you'll see more
and more of here. People now feel they can do their jobs from
all sorts of places..."
Tahoe Daily Tribune
Tahoe's exodus tide may turn
By Susan Wood
Read the Commentary
The city's travails clearly preoccupy Newsom. Jobs lost in the dot-com bust have been slow to return. "Thirty years ago, San Francisco was the economic capital of Northern California and a rival of Los Angeles as a business center," Kotkin said. "Today it is not remotely in that league."
International Herald Tribune
An adventurer in City Hall takes on a place of extremes
By Brian Knowlton
Read the Commentary
Los Angeles' election Tuesday of a Latino mayor would be a landmark event, and a source of pride for many Latinos. But if there's a lack of excitement over that aspect of Villaraigosa's possible victory, it's because it would be no surprise. Latinos have already taken their place on the more prominent rungs of society, and this would be the next logical step.
"There's a sense of inevitability," said author Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based specialist in urban trends. "There's a general feeling that this is our political karma. This has been part of the evolution of cities for a long time, dating to when New York City and Boston and Chicago first elected Irish mayors. In the '60s and '70s, it was the black mayors."
The Orange County Register
'Post-ethnic' leads race
Villaraigosa's election would be a Latino milestone, but many voters say ethnicity is not an issue.
By Martin Wisckol
Read the Commentary
Sophisticated
urban-oriented writers might pen endless lyrical tributes to the
joys of dense-packed metropolitan life, but as Joel Kotkin has
pointed out, a lot more people want their own castle in the 'burbs.
In 1940, New York City, its population at eight million,
accounted for more than six percent of the national population.
In 2000, New York still had a population of eight million, but
it accounted for less than three percent of the US.
Tech Central Station -
Nukes and the New Monasticism
By James Pinkerton
Read the Commentary
If
Boeing can leave Seattle, anything can happen,” Kotkin said.
“The best you can hope for is a particular executive might
have an affinity for a community. Even if they put their name on
a stadium, they’re doing it for recognition, not for the
community.” He said communities should
no longer look to corporations to revive downtowns or whole
communities.
Oshkosh Northwestern
City, brand’s identity linked
By Jeff Bollier
Read the Commentary
San Francisco may have
an economic addiction to tourist dollars, but when it comes to
the tourism industry, we are a city in denial. While large
corporations such as Bank of America and Chevron have moved
thousands of jobs from The City over the past decades, city
politicians and our highly educated residents have been
reluctant to embrace our new No. 1 industry: tourism.
San Francisco Examiner
City comes up short in promoting tourism
Funds slashed for agency pushing S.F. as destination
By J.K. Dineen
Read the Commentary
Starbucks
may hardly be the apex of hipness. But Joel Kotkin, a Los
Angeles-based demographer, points out that good coffee is now
part of the list of assets that North Dakota offers refugees
from California and New York. The state's longer-established
temptations are its schools and its clean air, plus the
second-lowest average commute time in the nation and the lowest
median house price.
The Economist
A Plug for the Plains Drain?
Young families may help the cities and
suburbs--but not the farms
Read the Commentary
Is
there any contemporary city in the world that comes close to
meeting all of Kotkin’s criteria for greatness? Actually, yes
— there is one: Singapore. It is a trading power, it is among
the safest urban communities in the world (thanks to a policing
system marked by authoritarian strictness) and it has somehow
managed, in Kotkin’s view, to grow and develop under Confucian
precepts that provide an underlying appreciation of the sacred.
In Singapore, Kotkin says, there is a “sense of moral order
and collective will” not apparent in many other parts of the
developing world.
Governing Magazine
ASSESSMENTS
Sacredness in the City
By Alan Ehrenhalt
Read the Commentary
"Los Angeles is more reviled than
emulated consciously, but mimicked nevertheless. It is, as one observer noted,
the original in the Xerox machine. Almost every major city in the Western
world looks more like L.A. today than it did 20 years ago. Asian cities often
try to do this, but they are constrained by land. They also sprawl, but tend
to be it with greater density out of necessity."
The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles
Q & A With Joel Kotkin
by Marc Ballon
Read the Commentary
Kotkin's
is a bracing book, one whose theses and arguments must be taken
seriously and dealt with by anyone who wishes to forecast the
urban future, or even describe what is going on today.
New York Sun
Ever Upward, Ever Outward
By Francis Morrone
Read the Commentary
The truth is that in
the great struggle between cities and suburbs, raging now for a
century or more, the verdict is finally in: Cities lost. The
vast majority of people prefer the ``burbs.'' The long-predicted
comeback of the traditional city isn't in the cards. For
those of us who love cities, it's hard to believe that the
future of civilized life lies in the suburbs. You call that
civilized?
Bloomberg News
Sprawl and `Slurbs' Are the Wave of the Future:
By Andrew Ferguson
Read the Commentary
I once had the opportunity to ask Joel Kotkin, America's most sensible urbanologist, what the key was to developing an area's prosperity. He paused, then said: Create a nice community. The people who live there will figure out something useful to do. That, in effect, has been the story of the Phoenix area for the past half-century. If we can keep the economic folly of our governing class within tolerable limits, it's likely to be our story for at least the next couple of decades as well.
The Wall Street Journal
CROSS COUNTRY:The Sun Devils
By Robert Robb
Read the Commentary
Kotkin points to urban history to confirm that a population of the rich nomad, the itinerant hipster and the immigrant service population does not bode well. "Your mayor and civic leadership should focus on diversifying the economy and attracting a strong middle class with kids," he says. "A city needs affordable family housing and strong public schools to accommodate the families who comprise a strong civic culture.
Denver Post
The 'ephemeral city'
By Susan Barnes-Gelt
Read the Commentary
And
while the state, Southern California and the county are tough on
business, Kotkin said the city trumps all three. "The city
of Los Angeles is the highest degree of difficulty in doing
business," he said, citing the regulatory and tax climate.
And he said the City Council functions as an arm of the public
employees union. "They are not exactly obsessed with the
concerns of the taxpayers who need city services," he said.
Los Angeles Daily News
County falls 12 spots in ranking
By Gregory J. Wilcox
Read the Commentary
In "Tribes," author Joel Kotkin described the emergence of cosmopolitan global tribes, defining them as international communities that combine a strong sense of a common origin with "two critical factors for success in the modern world: geographic dispersion and a belief in scientific progress." Kotkin's primary examples included the Jews, Chinese, and Indians. These groups, relying on mutual dependence and trust, created global networks that allowed them "to function collectively beyond the confines of national or regional borders." In later writings, Kotkin added Vietnamese to the list.
Pacific News Service
30 Years After Vietnam War, Vietnamese Diaspora Is
Thriving, Changing
By Andrew Lam
Read the Commentary
The
city first emerged not for commercial interests or to better
provide the necessities of life, but to honor the notion of
"sacred space." "It is difficult, perhaps to
imagine in our current secular era the degree to which religion
played a central role during most of urban history," Kotkin
writes. "Priests set the calendars that determined times
for work, worship, and feasting for the entire population."
One might quibble with his superlative declaration that without
this spiritual dimension, cities would never have materialized,
but it is striking how often religious institutions survived the
rise and fall of countless rulers and
regimes.
The American Enterprise
On Books
City Life
By Kelly Jane Torrance
Read the Commentary
San
Fernando Valley residents were so fed up with City Hall's lack
of respect they waged an unsuccessful campaign to divorce
themselves from Los Angeles three years ago. Now,
their votes are expected to decide who will run City Hall for
the next four years: Mayor James Hahn or City Councilman and
former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who would be
the city's first Latino mayor in modern times.
Sacramento Bee
All eyes on the valley
Residents will likely cast 40% of ballots in L.A. mayor runoff
By Laura Mecoy
Read the Commentary
The
mistaken theory is that the future belongs to a "knowledge
economy" run by a so-called "creative class." The
creative class is a bunch of highly mobile, bright young things
who, like Peter Pan, never grow up and are perpetually on the
prowl for the latest in "cool" urban experiences.
Cater to them, goes the theory, or fall behind. The theory was
concocted by Professor Richard Florida. But there's one big
problem: Economic growth isn't actually occurring in the places
Florida's theory predicts. Instead, as Joel Kotkin, the
country's most sensible urbanologist, points out, it's actually
occurring in places where middle-age squares with families are
congregating.
Arizona Republic
Despite elites' view, Valley can compete
By Robert Robb
Read the Commentary
The cycle of city growth is turning from large groupings of buildings to areas more green, but still with many of the advantages of urban areas with the American Dream of home ownership key to the change, a researcher claims in a new book.
"Any reform policy that tells people that they can't have a single family home is doomed to fail -- at least in the U.S.," said Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "The City: A Global History."
UPI
New book: Future of cities is green
By Alexandra Klaren
Read the Commentary
Kotkin calls himself a “progressive in the traditional sense — that is, endorsing a strong role for public infrastructure and supporting private-sector growth as the means for upward
mobility. My sense is that progressivism as defined today is basically a remedial program,” Kotkin said. “It creates no real wealth and may even reduce opportunities for working-class mobility.”
LA Weekly
Your City Council (Not) at Work
What keeps L.A.’s politicians from delivering on their progressive dreams
by Robert Greene
Read the Commentary
Professor Kotkin notes that the
main ambition of his students in architecture is to work
downtown, building studios, skyscrapers, museums and concert
halls, but regrets to announce to them that it is in suburbs
that that will occur. The
challenge of the twenty-first century, he says, it is to make
urban sprawl more effective, more interesting and more human.
La Presse
L'option banlieue, à l'heure du protocole de Kyoto
Aux États-Unis, la banlieue a beaucoup grandi et grandira encore
Pelletier, Réal
Read the Commentary
The
New Urbanists pick on the ugliest form of suburban sprawl and
compare it to the loftiest vision of urban living. They don't
mention that even the most sprawling older suburbs (such as
those in north Orange County) are bubbling with life, as
immigrant businesses revamp strip malls. The suburbs are not
uniform or soulless, despite the rhetoric.
The Orange County Register
City planning by Those Who Know Best
By Steven Greenhut Sr.
Read the Commentary
This
time around, Florida argues that the United States is struggling
to hold on to the Creative Class, a problem exacerbated by the
Bush Administration's heightened security concerns after
September 11, the growing divide between conservatives and
liberals, and the attacks on scientific investigation into areas
such as stem cell research, which are causing people to leave
the country or stop them from getting in. As
a result, he says, the US could lose out to talent-magnet
countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, Belgium and Britain.
The Age
Book Review
Florida's gospel and the creative class
By Leon Gettler
Read the
Commentary
What’s
the news here — that liberal Jews vote ideologically? It’s a
mark of ethnic security, I’d argue, not self-hatred, that has
led Westside and West Valley Jews to elect such non-Jewish
liberals as Tom Hayden and Sheila Kuehl to legislative positions
over the past two decades. The creation of an America in which
minority groups are secure enough to vote their ideology rather
than their identity is something, I’d think, that all but the
most sectarian Jews would applaud.
LA Weekly
Powerlines
Is It Good for the Jews?
The chosen people choose a mayor
by Harold Meyerson
Read the
Commentary
A year ago, Kotkin’s offhand remark about downtown enraged some
people, who even criticized the RCGA for hiring him. But a
consultant who sugarcoats his advice isn’t worth much. Kotkin
had a lot of important things to say about our business culture,
and we won’t move the region forward if we don’t start
paying attention to him.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Futurist redux puts our best foot forward
By David Nicklaus
Read the
Commentary
When
people go out into the suburbs, it's not like somebody suddenly
snips your taste buds," says Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles
author who studies urban and suburban trends. "These people
have been around, have been exposed to good restaurants. These
are affluent people, and there's a market for a steakhouse or an
interesting Italian or Chinese restaurant." He says suburbs
have evolved from "just a place to live" to places to
shop and then to work, and communities such as West Chester are
now in the next phase.
Cincinnati Enquirer
Something new on the menu: Suburban Dining
Busy families stay close to home when going out,
many restaurateurs rush in to satisfy appetites
By Dan Sewell
Read the
Commentary
L.A. is not a political city like New
York, Boston, or Chicago, where city government has a daily presence in
people's lives," says Joel Kotkin, an L.A.-based senior fellow at the New
America Foundation, a think tank. Blame it on the city's sprawl, which keeps
people focused on their own backyards; its rich history of apathy; or simply a
bad case of issue fatigue: six statewide elections in three years. Then
there's the unexpected rain, eno ugh to render the region a potential federal
disaster area. "For most people," says Kotkin, "no problem is
big enough to get them upset, unless it looks like the city is going to blow
up."
US News & World Report
A limited engagement
By Betsy Streisand
Read the
Commentary
Mr. Kotkin said he believed that urban downtowns will exist, but as a
"niche lifestyle" peopled by what he calls the "nomadic
affluent." These consist of wealthy people whose primary residence may be
elsewhere but who live downtown to be close to business; or of people 25 to 32
years old who live downtown because of its perceived hipness. These people tend to be affluent, but
the trouble is they don't stay around long.
Dallas Morning News
'Burbs, cities may be able to learn from each other
By David Flick
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin
said that Latino and Asian immigrants are the ones most likely
to stay in a region and that many people are moving to smaller
cities. "It's something that needs to be paid attention
to," he said. "Over the last part of the 20th century,
migration has been moving to second and third tier cities."
He added the population seems to be wanting to avoid big cities.
The highest rates of migration are to cities like Las Vegas;
Charlotte, North Carolina; Phoenix, and Atlanta, Georgia.
Daily Democrat
Forum focus is business, growth and education
By Charlotte Sanchez-Kosa
Read the
Commentary
In
the end, Kotkin writes, cities are held together, “by a
consciousness that unites their people in a shared identity.” I myself am looking at these candidates to see
who best engenders and conveys that sense of common purpose, of
shared greatness. I want a mayor who stands for what Kotkin
calls, “the powerful moral vision that holds cities together.”
If he also supports a subway to the
Westside, that would be nice, too.
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Mayoral Magic
By Rob Eshman
Read the
Commentary
Democrats,
says Joel Kotkin, are blind to the shift. He says many oppose
urban sprawl and focus on reviving inner cities, and they are,
in fact, getting the vote in cities like San Francisco. But he
adds that the Democrats are losing it in places like Fresno.
"They continually target their policies to the places in
the country that are losing people and to some extent have
contempt for the parts of the country that are gaining
people," he said
Voice of America
Authors Say Expanding US Home Ownership Helps Republicans
By Mike O'Sullivan
Read the
Commentary
A
Hertzberg-Villaraigosa runoff would be the stuff of novels.
While Villaraigosa focuses in part on the city's immigrant
working class, Hertzberg shares the views of urban theorists
Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel that reining in public-sector
workers and keeping taxes down is key to retaining a vibrant
middle class.
The Washington Post
L.A. Picks a Mayor
By Harold Meyerson
Read the
Commentary
Euro-American
cities, where teachers unions prevent improvements in public
education and "municipal welfare states" keep living
costs high, increasingly attract affluent and often childless
liberals: Seattle, Kotkin says, "has roughly the same
population it did in 1960, but barely half as many
children." Euro-American cities have, in varying degrees,
the malady known in the 1970s as "the British
disease," when Britain was called, as Turkey once was,
"the sick man of Europe."
The Washington Post
Sclerosis Meets the Terminator
By George F. Will
Read the
Commentary
Not everybody is
delighted, but suburban growth -- the dreaded "sprawl"
-- shows no signs of letting up. Writing in The Washington Post,
urban historian Joel Kotkin last week declared the suburbs not
just our inevitable future but also our overwhelming present
reality. "Since
1950, more than 90 percent of metropolitan population growth in
America has taken place in the suburbs," writes Mr. Kotkin,
citing the appeal of their "space, quality of life, safety
and privacy."
Dallas Morning News
If Croatian village floats their boat ...
By Jacquielynn Floyd
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin—who
places himself in the progressive tradition of former New York
mayor Fiorello LaGuardia—worries that Florida’s findings
might be used by cities as a way to neglect mounting
infrastructural and social problems: “It’s almost like we’ve
taken the ephemeral and put it in front,” he says. “It’s a
way of people saying we cannot deal with urban education, urban
infrastructure. New York doesn’t need another art museum; it
needs a subway that works.”
Maisonneuve
Creative Class War: The Debate over Richard Florida’s Ideas
by Christopher DeWolf
Read the
Commentary
Strathmore
could signal something of a trend by bringing Beethoven beyond
the Capital Beltway, said Joel Kotkin, an author and consultant
who has studied changes in the urban landscape: The arts are
following the people."I think the people interested in the
arts should be pleased that children are growing up exposed to
the arts, and they may become people who will want to go into
the city to see a performance," said Kotkin, who lives in
Los Angeles. Large concert halls like Strathmore are an
indication that suburbs have the resources, as well as better
management than cities may.
The Gazette
Arts in a major key
by Douglas Tallman
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin
said evolving demographics have played a role too, citing the
area's growing population from soccer-loving regions such as
Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, "A
large part of the population of Los Angeles doesn't come from a
football tradition." And,
he added, the political will to secure an NFL team is scant
compared with other parts of the country. "L.A.'s
a hard place to do business under normal circumstances,"
Kotkin said. "It's very arcane. Jim Hahn doesn't need to
produce a football team to say he's a successful mayor. People
are more concerned about having a lower crime rate and getting
potholes filled."
Los Angeles Times
L.A. X
There hasn't been an NFL team in Los Angeles for 10 years, and despite many plans, there might not be one for a while
By Sam Farmer
Read the
Commentary
A scathing report by prominent Los Angeles economist Jack Kyser
and social critic Joel Kotkin puts the blame squarely on the
shoulders of the narrowly focused local political leadership. The report for the Los
Angeles County Economic Development Corp. documents how in the
last generation the region's leadership has pursued failed
policies of social justice, environmental extremism and
over-regulation that have left
far more people in poverty while squeezing the middle class and
the opportunity to reach the middle class.
Los Angeles Daily News
Roadmap to recovery
L.A. needs business-friendly leadership
Read the
Commentary
Report co-author Joel
Kotkin says the city's slide has already started, as some
businesses leave Los Angeles for other cities. "Southern
California, Los Angeles in particular, is falling behind other
parts of the country, particularly other parts of the West, in
the battle for good jobs, for investment capital, and I think it
has to do with self-inflicted wounds,"
Voice of America
Report: Los Angeles Losing Its Competitive Edge
By Michael O'Sullivan
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin
and Kyser believe growth efforts should be focused on
professional and business services, tourism, financial services,
international trade, apparel and textiles design and
manufacturing; motion picture and television production; health
sciences/biomedical and specialized manufacturing. Kyser said
that it is crucial to involve private-sector executives, who in
the past helped shape the region's business environment. They
are better prepared to the task than elected or appointed public
officials.
Los Angeles Daily News
It's wrong-way L.A.
Study slams local leaders, offers plan for economic revival
By Gregory J. Wilcox
Read the
Commentary
It is a well-documented fact that 'trust' lowers transaction costs, corruption, and bureaucracy. Trust can be a source of significant competitive advantage to a family business. In India, family businesses have often revolved around large joint families. Joel Kotkin has documented the families of Palanpuri Jains from western India, who have established commercial colonies in diamond centres as dispersed as Tel Aviv, Antwerp, Mumbai, London and New York. Today these families account for roughly 50 per cent of all purchases of rough diamonds in the world.
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
The Family Concern
By Adi B. Godrej
Read the
Commentary
"It's the whole
question of identity," said Joel Kotkin, a scholar of urban
life at the New America Foundation. "How is one place more
attractive than another? What's special about one place more
than another? It's about gradations, and these gradations are
important to people." Just how important can be seen in the
efforts to create levels of middle class throughout the Southern
California megalopolis. The San Fernando Valley recently tried
to secede from what it saw as the rabble of the City of Los
Angeles, but failed.
The New York Times
Anaheim Journal: Angels Make a Play for Los Angeles in Name Only
By Charlie LeDuff
Read the
Commentary
Given all
this, what do Democrats need to do to become competitive outside
the metropolitan areas? Kotkin and Frey suggest that they need
to change their attitude. "Democratic legislators,"
they write, " too often seem hostile to suburban concerns
and indifferent to the aspirations of those who would like to
buy a home and a small green place to call their own. In
Albuquerque, for example, planners working for the local
Democratic government advocated banning backyards, an essential
part of the middle-class family lifestyle.
Innovation Briefs
The Emerging Influence of the "Micropolis"
By C. Kenneth Orski
Read the
Commentary
Today
"sprawl" is the dirty word for the kind of suburban
growth that people who prefer cities don't approve of. Yet
sprawl, as urban guru Joel Kotkin says, is nothing new, nothing
bad and it's here to stay. Probably half of Americans grew up in
sprawl, but don't realize it. Until I was 8, I lived on Mabrick
Avenue in Mt. Lebanon, a 1930s-era neighborhood with brick
streets, sidewalks, alleys and a sensible mix of single-family
homes, duplexes and apartments that was "old sprawl"
by the mid-1950s. Today Mabrick is the kind of perfect
residential street the New Urbanists - those planning busybodies
who'd like to force us all to live packed in dense cities and
ride buses like it's 1900 -- are desperately trying to
re-create.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 
'Sprawl' is A-OK by me
By Bill Steigerwald
Read the
Commentary
One of America's most
prominent analysts of state and city demographics, Joel Kotkin,
said New York State "has always been, and will likely
continue to be, a high-cost area, but that's only half the
problem. " In
addition to the problem of taxes and regulatory costs, he said,
were New York's high housing costs, which he characterized as
"always among the top three or four in the country."
Moreover, market-based housing costs are largely out of the
reach of the legislature.
New York Sun
Business Costs in N.Y. State Among Highest
By Roderick Boyd
Read the
Commentary
The economic
shifts occurring in Canoga Park reflect broader changes in
industry throughout the San Fernando Valley. "The Valley
was really clobbered in the early '90s, then it sort of slowed
down, and then sped up again" more recently, said Joel
Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a
nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington. "There
was a massive movement to China of a lot of smaller suppliers to
aerospace companies." These days, the gray, 1950s-era
Rocketdyne building looks out of place amid the splashy
electronics stores and fast-food restaurants surrounding it.
Across the street is Westfield Shoppingtown Topanga mall, which
recently ann
ounced a $300-million
expansion that will include a Neiman Marcus luxury department
store.
Los Angeles Times
Canoga Park Shifts From Aerospace to Retail Hubs
By Amanda Covarrubias
Read the
Commentary
But
despite the feel-good sentiments, Schwarzenegger, who came into
office promising to balance the state's books, has yet to
implement any major financial reforms, and the bills for past
borrowings are coming due. He has tried to use his popularity to
go around the Democrat-controlled legislature, but governing
through ballot initiatives has its limits. "Arnold is the
'stop the bleeding' guy," says Joel Kotkin, a
Schwarzenegger supporter who is an economic analyst at the New
America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in
Washington. "But I don't know if he is going to do the
reconstructive surgery."
Time
The Arnold Show
Most Californians love their Gubernator. But can he fix the state's problems by being a one-man band?
By Terry McCarthy
Read the
Commentary
Mr.
Kotkin says historically when countries lose manufacturing dominance it is
an early sign of a loss of economic leadership. He worries that China will
eventually challenge and possibly overtake the United States economically.
"China has surpassed the United States as the largest recipient of
foreign direct investment," he noted. "Its currency reserves
have increased by a considerable amount. They now have enormous financial
power. Anyone who studies history knows that countries that accumulate
industrial power very soon have financial power."
Voice of America
China Increasingly Competes with US in Manufacturing
By Barry Wood
Read the
Commentary
In
The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe,
"Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue
locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and
Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation
- but generally had poor showings in those places where families
are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer
suburbs of older metropolitan areas." Politicians
will try to pander to this group. They should know this is a
spiritual movement, not a political one.
The New York Times
The New Red-Diaper Babies
By David Brooks
Read the
Commentary
Like
the Anglo-Saxons, Jews and Chinese, desis are building a networked
civilization, an archipelago of nodes linked by mutual trust and a belief
in knowledge and the virtues of technology. As Joel Kotkin explained a
decade ago, cosmopolitan groups “do not surrender their sense of a
peculiar ethnic identity at the altar of technology or science, but
utilize their historically conditioned values and beliefs to cope
successfully with change.”
The Globalist
"Bollystan—The Global India"
By Parag Khanna
Read the
Commentary
Mr.
Bush's optimistic message gave him a commanding advantage in
pro-growth America. Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based writer who
knows as much about the grassroots economy as anyone, points to
the close relationship between growth, both demographic and
economic, and a propensity to vote Republican. Most of Mr.
Kerry's base was in stagnant America. Democratic strongholds
such as Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and Mr. Kerry's Boston
have been losing people and jobs. Mr.
Bush's America, for the most part, is booming.
The Economist
The fear myth
Actually, George Bush's victory had more to do with hope and growth
Read the
Commentary
Joel
Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based expert on social and economic
trends, said Old Pasadena and Valencia's Town Center have
successfully carried out the retail village concept, integrating
offices, shops and housing on a walkable scale. "The
intelligent way to live in Southern California is to do as much
as possible in your area," he said. "It feeds into the
need for a sense of place, a sense of identity. We want to
participate in a metropolitan region but live in a
village."
Los Angeles Times
In Glendale, It's a Rumble on the Boulevard
Opinions vary as to whether a retail-residential project set to break ground will help or hurt Brand, the city's main drag. Some fear retail overload.
By Wendy Thermos
Read the
Commentary
Government
officials need to reverse their anti-business attitude for the
San Fernando Valley to grow its $30 billion annual payroll and
remain an economic force in the region, according to an economic
development report released Wednesday. Much of the blame for the
anti-business stance rests with the state, concluded the
Mulholland Institute Report prepared for the Economic Alliance
of the San Fernando Valley. In the past, much of the worst
damage to the Valley economy has been self-inflicted by local
leadership at City Hall over issues such as business taxes, the
report said.
Los Angeles Daily News
Report urges aid for Valley
City, state keys to growth
By Gregory J. Wilcox
Read the
Commentary
The report authors said
goals for the Valley should be:
- Building an economic
development consensus that embraces businesses, government
and the nonprofit sector to knock down barriers to high-end
economic development and growth.
- Improving the
quality of life so highly skilled people and businesses can
be attracted to the area and induced to stay.
- Creating a new
capacity for growth, which is key to expanding space for
growing companies and preparing the work force for new
opportunities that will be offered.
Los Angeles Daily News
Good jobs in Valley plan
Northeast section key, analysts say
By Gregory J. Wilcox
Read the
Commentary
In the 1960s
and 1970s,...the Democrats began to focus less on economics and
more on social conditions. At a time of declining real wages,
Democrats were seen to be more concerned with liberal social
programs to promote the interests of blacks, gays, women and
other groups. This pushed a lot of traditional Democrats into
the Republican column — construction and blue-collar workers,
homemakers, military veterans, cops, evangelicals, rural
residents and many ethnics.
The New York
Daily News
How the Dems lost it
By Mort Zuckerman
Read the
Commentary
While
political analysts have been busy dividing the electorate by
race and religion and age, perhaps the United States electorate
is divided by something more elemental: location, between those
who live on the water and those who do not. This
pattern can seem, at first glance, like the ancient distinction
throughout the world between liberal cosmopolites and
traditionalist farmers. The inlanders have always doubted the
morals of merchants in port cities. And the urbanites have
always considered the inlanders backward.
The New York Times
Geography Is Destiny:
The Real Divide: Waterside Voters Versus Inlanders
By John Tierney
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin, ... likes light rail and believes it can serve an important function — if it
links people to the various suburban poles or existing activity centers. The
plan before voters would primarily funnel folks to downtown Phoenix. It
ignores existing commuting patterns and where the likely job growth will be.
East Valley Tribune
Voting down 400 will raise roadblocks
By Tom Gibbons
Read the
Commentary
Exit
polls from around the country showed an electorate highly
motivated by moral issues, with President Bush and other
Republicans benefiting from the GOP's identification with voters
as the party of traditional values. Twenty-four
percent of voters in the Midwest, and 22 percent nationally,
cited moral issues as key to which presidential candidate they
favored, ahead of the economy, terrorism, the conflict in Iraq,
health care, taxes and education.
Sacramento Bee
Nation's cultural divide: Values
By Margaret Talev
Read the
Commentary
The
creative class concept is so popular with city officials because it acts
as if there is an easy solution to the problems they face,” [Kotkin]
says. “There isn’t. Cities need to work on fixing the basics and
providing a reasonable tax and regulatory environment if they want to
grow.” In fact, says Kotkin, some decidedly unhip places like Riverside,
Calif.; Des Moines, Iowa; and Sioux Falls, S.D., are doing quite well
while many of the places that scored well on Florida’s index have been
hurting in recent years. “Florida’s theory looked pretty enticing
during the tech boom. But a lot of those places that he says are models of
urban growth, like San Francisco, are doing pretty badly now,” he
argues. “How can this theory be right when all the hip places aren’t
growing?”
Federal
Reserve Bank of Richmond
Fall 2004 Region Focus
Why Cities Grow
By Aaron Steelman
Read the
Commentary
Requires
Adobe Reader
Even when
earthquakes devour neighborhoods, fires obliterate history and
hurricanes blow away homes, a massive exodus doesn't happen,
experts say. And if ground zero offers sunny skies or ocean
breezes, count on more people moving in, content to take a
chance on Mother Nature's rampages.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Although 4 storms battered state, don’t expect exodus of Floridians
By Liz Doup
Read the
Commentary
Cities
do not become successful because they are hip and cool. ... But
it's so much easier to put $2 million into downtown lofts and,
no offense but, sucker some newspaper reporter into writing
about them and get people to move into them. Meanwhile, nothing
has actually changed. "Change will occur when a city
establishes suburbs that are not defined by sprawl but by a
sense of community." Kotkin calls for villagelike suburbs
that "work better," by combining parks, restaurants
and some retail within walking distance of single-family
homes.
Albuquerque Journal
Maybe our Downtown isn't
where it's at
By Autumn Gray
Read the
Commentary
The
suburbs are growing up," said Kotkin, whose latest book,
"The City: A Global History," is due out next year.
"They're not these sort of vapid, mindless bedroom
communities. There's this notion that all the cultured people
live in the cities, all the hip young people with nose rings
live there. The reality is a lot of those hip young people with
nose rings turn 30 and move to the suburbs."
Atlanta Journal Constitution
GWINNETT PHILHARMONIC: A noteworthy milestone
As its 10th season begins, orchestra's still having fun
By Jennifer Brett
Read the
Commentary
Since
Florida's book "The Rise of the Creative Class" was published
two years ago, he and his colleagues at Catalytix, his consulting firm,
have roamed the country spreading this gospel and advising various cities
and metro areas how to cash in on the creative class. Now, predictably,
the creative class backlash has started. In particular, Joel Kotkin, the
iconoclastic urban pundit from Los Angeles, has taken the side of grunt
cities. Kotkin claims that creativity is not a big job generator
nationwide, and most cities are simply setting themselves up for failure
and disappointment if they pin their hopes on the creative class.
Governing Magazine
The Panacea Patrol
A fresh idea about how to stimulate local economies is fueling a debate
about whether it can solve all problems.
By William Fulton
Read the
Commentary
It was not
just families with children who preferred life in the suburbs,
Mr. Kotkin told the Property Council of Australia's annual
conference in Perth this week. Empty-nesters
were more likely to move to the countryside or a smaller home in
the suburbs once their children left home, rather than move into
a city apartment. As for attracting younger workers, it was not
enough for cities and towns to build cafes, art galleries and
body-piercing parlours because talented young workers would
follow job opportunities and affordable living, especially as
they got older and had children. "There's this crazy idea
that if you are hip and cool people will come."
Sydney Morning Herald
For all the big city talk, we're still suburbanites
By Lisa Pryor
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin
argues that cities that desire a healthy long-term future would
be better off marketing themselves as family-friendly than
terminally hip. "If San Diego cannot develop a more
balanced economy, places too much focus on attracting the
creative class, it will likely become less attractive to
families, working-class people and upwardly mobile
immigrants," he says. "The notion that a city can be
'creative' without investing in its infrastructure – schools,
transit, roads – is a delusion of both the political right and
the elitist left."
San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego, the 'Ephemeral city'
By Richard Louv
Read the
Commentary
A new
generation of Americans is migrating to cities and small towns
in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Immigrants are heading
for the heartland, too, in greater numbers. Author Joel Kotkin
credits the resurgence to, among other things, the ever-higher
cost of living in East and West Coast big cities -- especially
housing -- as well as the freedom introduced by the digital
revolution and a renewed respect for "Plains values."
The Des Moines Register
Editorials
Nice to be noticed
Read the
Commentary
Wisconsin's
manufacturing sector is rapidly converting from traditional
processes and techniques to advanced manufacturing, which relies
on technology. All
of this demands more educated workers - and more educated
workers tend to demand a different kind of lifestyle.
Wisconsin Real Estate Magazine
Why Wisconsin is Becoming a Technology Hotspot
By Tom Still
Read the
Commentary
Cities are
looking into everything from building museums and art spaces to
encouraging the development of loft apartments that they believe
will attract more creative types, including young people.
Michigan has even embarked on a statewide "Cool
Cities" initiative that hopes to help remake overlooked
communities into hip neighborhoods.
Wall Street Journal
Cities Launch Programs To Lure College Graduates
To Combat Brain Drain, Cities Boost Efforts to Court Graduates;
Receptions With Executives
By Anne Marie Chaker
Read the
Commentary
St.
Louis was planned as the great metropolis of the American
Midwest. It didn't turn out that way, but it wasn't for lack of
qualifications. The city is perfectly located in the center of
the nation on the banks of its largest river, in a region that
experienced unabated growth for much of the 19th century. Its
rise was, for lack of a better term, meteoric. Few cities were
built as purely for the Industrial Age as St. Louis. That has
made its fall equally meteoric.
The Next American City
Gateway Bypass:
Can St. Louis Survive in the post industrial era?
By Charles Shaw
Read the
Commentary
One of the
most encouraging presentations Tuesday came from author Joel
Kotkin, who said that medium-sized cities like Madison are
poised for growth in the coming decades. He said the
affordability of smaller Midwestern cities is proving a major
selling point with Americans who are placing greater emphasis on
their quality of life.
Madison Capital Times
A 'Healthy City' needs cooperation Private sector cautious on mayor
By Mike Ivey
Read the
Commentary
Instead of trying to
create hip districts, Kotkin says cities need to focus on
another, more pressing problem: What happens when that hip
25-year-old turns 30, gets married and has children? Creative or
not, statistics show that they leave the city for more
family-friendly suburbs. That’s when priorities shift away
from rock ’n’ roll to safe neighborhoods and good schools.
Richmond Style Weekly
Getting Hip: How does Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” hold up in Richmond?
by Scott Bass
Read the
Commentary
During the 1990s, when
everyone was heralding the urban revival, Kotkin cautioned that
a smattering of coffee bars in a handful of cities does not
constitute a rebirth.... He maintains that medium-sized cities
will prove most attractive for growth in the next decades. No
coincidence he's delivering the keynote speech today.
Madison Capital Times
Selling the image of the healthy city
By Mike Ivey
Read the
Commentary
The 2004 election is likely to become
the first $1 billion campaign in American history, with John Kerry and various
leftish groups raising money at the same furious rate as George Bush. And yet
in large swathes of the country the result is a foregone conclusion. Texas and
most of the South will vote for Mr. Bush come what may; New York and
California will vote for Mr. Kerry. The two parties will devote almost all
their extraordinary reserves of treasure and energy to wooing voters in 18
swing states.
The Economist
Swing States: Welcome to Ohio—and the heart of the election battle
Read the
Commentary
Latinos
are harder to assimilate because their homeland is so close.
They have not kissed goodbye to their past, as John Steinbeck's
wretched Okies did 65 years ago. Latinos are always nipping back
over the border. Moreover, their arrival has coincided with a
new fashion for multiculturalism: rather than being forced to
become American, Latinos are now being told by left-wing
professors to hang on to their culture and celebrate their
diversity.
The Economist
SURVEY: CALIFORNIA: Just like the rest of us
Read the
Commentary
Since
the mid-1990s, Kotkin said, polls have found people are increasingly
interested in settling in stable communities where they can raise
families. During that same period, the Internet and other technological
advances have made it easier for people to work in areas that had been
considered removed from the major business centers.
The Kansas City Star
County told it's got a lot going for it
By Kevin Collison
Read the
Commentary
According to Joel Kotkin, one of the
critical issues dividing the country is religion. In contrast to the
industrialized nations of Europe or Asia, religion in America is a
persistent social force. “In America, religion plays this very unique
role,” he says. “So your attitude toward religion is essentially
something that really will tend to drive your political opinion. And
voters who go to church are much more apt to support the Republicans than
those who don’t.
Voice of America
American Voters Divided into Two Camps, Find Little Common Ground
By Serena Parker
Read the
Commentary
Like
all fads, I think what Florida says has a sense of truth,"
said Joel Kotkin, a consultant to the St. Louis Regional Chamber
& Growth Association. "But I think people are taking
too much out of Florida's work and making it an answer to
everything. ... I'm not so confident that the number of gays is
the key to your economy."
In fact, Kotkin argues
that in today's world, the drivers of growth might be the
antithesis of Florida's artists: suburban families.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
What, not enough nose rings?
By Eric Heisler
Read the
Commentary
It's not nice to say, but on
some level, sprawl seems to work," Kotkin says. "My thought all
along is that we should look at what people really do, not what New Urbanists
think they ought to do. I'm not saying I love these other places. I probably
wouldn't like living in a tract suburb 30 miles outside of Atlanta. But
someone obviously does."
Willamette Week Online
Newark? Newark?- A look behind the biz-mag rankings that shellacked Portland.
By Zach Dundas
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin also stresses housing
affordability, noting that the cities Florida praises have become unaffordable
for families and for many workers. Seattle, for example, now has the nation's
lowest percentage of people between the ages of 5 and 17, followed by Boston,
Denver and San Francisco.
Tacoma News Tribune
Tacoma might yet attain chic downtown, nice neighborhoods
By Peter Callaghan
Read the
Commentary
In his book, Tribes,
Joel Kotkin describes how race, religion and identity determine
success in the new global economy. His five global tribes are
the Jews, the British, the Japanese, the Chinese and the
Indians.'India's revival, led by its wayward sons, could yet
shake the firmament of the coming century,' he writes in the
1993 book. India
should replicate China's experience with its diaspora, some
suggest. But how?
The Straits Times
Return of the overseas Indians
By Asad Latif
Read the
Commentary
Perhaps
the most predictable bottom line in this current economic expansion,"
Kotkin adds, "is, well, the bottom line. Places kindest to business
costs, whether in terms of office rents, taxes or regulatory environments,
seem to be doing best."
Rocky Mountain News
Mayor, Mayor, quite contrary ...
By Vincent Carroll
Read the
Commentary
A merging
and melding will take place over the next decade as the once
solid lines dividing city and suburb blur and extend.
Manhattan's role as a vibrant cultural center will remain
unchallenged. But social, demographic and political forces may
alter New York's dominant regional role.
Newsday
The 'Los Angelization' of
New York City
By Charles V. Zehren
Read the
Commentary
There is a
small subset of people for whom the culture and arts is a huge
determiner,” Kotkin said. “I would argue that is a
relatively small percentage of the population. And basically,
people will migrate to places where there’s money, because
they’re selling high-end services.
The Oklahoma City Journal Record
Analyst questions need to be
‘hip and cool’ city
By Heidi R. Centrella
Read the
Commentary
Many experts believe that
California's advantages—such as proximity to Asian markets, high-quality
intellectual capital, a strong tradition of startup activity—still more than
make up for the costs of regulations. Levy believes that, as the national
economy recovers, California will outpace the rest of the country in job
growth. And, Kotkin notes, business is now very engaged in California
politics, and new Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to improve the state's
corporate climate, which should make future legislature more
business-friendly.
Entrepreneur Magazine
Mixed Messages
Is California driving away businesses--or
setting an example for other states?
By Joshua Kurlantzick
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin noted
the Florida theory does not function when one observes the history of Silicon Valley: "Florida implies that there is a
connection between the tolerance of homosexuality and the success of this valley-like technological incubator. But they are worlds completely different, separated by kilometers and far from dependent: on
one hand, there are the "nerds", which are not urban but very
"suburban", and on the other, the gays of San Francisco, very urban."
Le Devoir
Le gourou de Tremblay
de plus en plus critiqué
By Antoine Robitaille
Read the
Commentary
en Francais
According to Mr. Kotkin, those lousy numbers could mean that 30-somethings
looking to buy homes and settle down are about to rediscover the Heartland,
where they will learn to live without glorious coastlines and mountains but in
nice affordable houses in real (not gentrified) neighborhoods. Eventually,
employers will discover it too, Mr. Kotkin opines. Why pay employees what it
takes to live modestly on the Left and East coasts, when they can hire more
cheaply in St. Louis where cost of living and quality of life meet somewhere
in the middle.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Surf Missouri!
Editorial
Read the
Commentary
While Kotkin found local leaders
focused on structural issues, such as downtown redevelopment and city charter
reform, rank-and-file St. Louisans preferred to talk about safe neighborhoods
and affordable housing. Those, he says, are the assets that
will attract twenty- and thirty-something professionals - if only St. Louis
can dump some of the cultural baggage that's holding us back.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Establishment-sponsored study minces no words on St. Louis' faults, strengths
By David Nicklaus
Read the
Commentary
"It
seemed like a few years ago, everyone was saying that their kids
didn't want to come back here to live," said Bob Lewis, a
principal with St. Louis-based consulting firm Development
Strategies. "It's kind of surprising, but maybe we're not
doing as bad as we thought. ... Maybe we're losing the
back-breaking manufacturing jobs, but we're keeping a good cadre
of young, smart people."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Brain gain, not drain
By Eric Heisler
Read the
Commentary
High-growth
areas will generally have low housing and commercial real estate
costs, business friendly city governments and an affordable
cost-of-living, but not necessarily, said Joel Kotkin, the
article's author. San Bernardino/Riverside (counties) have
consistently been on top of job growth (in the state) for years.
The decline in the stock market really didn't affect it. Neither
did the collapse of the dot-com industry,"
San Bernardino Sun
Survey: Region No.2 for business Magazine says area favors
entrepreneurs
By Jim Steinberg, Business Editor
Read the
Commentary
"Authors Joel
Kotkin and David Friedman said they purposely excluded more
"subjective" factors, such as hospitable climate and
proximity to research universities, that have become common
criteria in other national economic measurements. By focusing on job
figures, a factor the authors think is more objective, they
hoped to avoid biased results that unfairly rewarded cities for
popularity and positive stereotypes."
New Orleans Times-Picayune
N.O. area No. 18 in Inc. survey: Entrepreneurial appeal
ranked
By Keith Darcé and Stewart Yerton
Read the
Commentary
"I think the whole
cluster focus is completely misplaced for a place like
Fresno," Kotkin said. "God came down and said, 'Here
are the industries you have to go after'? ... Encourage the
entrepreneurial process, and let them do what they're passionate
about. Kotkin recommends
studying why people are moving to the Fresno-Clovis area and
what would encourage them to stay. "The best clusters are
ones that organize themselves," he said. "Just find
out what people want and need.
Fresno Bee
Fresno in Inc.'s best for business:City ranks No. 4 in list
assessing job growth, affordability.
By Joan Obra
Read the
Commentary
This
year clearly indicates that major corporations from outside the South have
finally squashed the "Unthinkable Move" theory. More than a
dozen high profile corporate name plates decided to pick up and move to
the South from outside the region in 2003. We predict this rash of
headquarter relocations to the South is just the beginning.
Southern Business and Development
The "Unthinkable Move?" Not Any Longer.
Read the
Commentary
With
the rapid adoption of inexpensive broadband technology, and the
cost of urban living still high despite the downturn, tech
communities are popping up in unlikely places. Migratory
entrepreneurs have set up shop in places as diverse as Grand
Forks, North Dakota, Wenatchee, Washington, Bozeman, Montana,
and Amherst, Massachusetts – scrapping the rat race and
cutting back on their business costs, to boot. Many of these
businesses are home-based and unincorporated, literally hidden
from view and flying under the radar of government
statisticians. Still, these "hidden tech" communities
are getting VC attention."
Red Herring
Hidden tech
Read the Commentary
For
Arlington, it was first the religion of growth for growth's
sake, then the religion of amusement parks, then the religion of
the shopping mall, followed by the religion of major-league
sports and new ballparks, followed by the religion of the
pedestrian mall, followed by the religion of convention centers
and the tourist industry. The newest religion seems to be a
growing devotion to the forces of high technology and the
ability to somehow create a community culture that attracts the
techies of the world.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Arlington Must Find Its Identity
By O.K. Carter
Read the
Commentary
San Francisco's army of homeless can give it a medieval feel.
Beggars line the streets and doss in doorways. Deranged
unfortunates roam free. The United Nations fountain in the Civic
Centre had to be walled off recently because it was being used
as a public lavatory. The homeless get a monthly stipend from
the city and state governments, and free food from religious
groups. A recent ballot initiative to give street people care
rather than cash was struck down on a legal technicality, though
the voters had approved it.
The Economist
A Portrait in Red and Blue
Read the
Commentary
Every
day, new immigrants pour into America's largest metropolitan
areas, swelling the population and diversifying the culture.
There's only one problem. An increasing number of those
immigrants are later picking up and moving somewhere else. And
unlike the middle-class whites of the 1960s and '70s, they're
not fleeing to the suburbs, they're moving to entirely different
cities that are more affordable."
The Christian Science Monitor
Big cities struggle to hold onto new immigrants as costs rise
By Sara B. Miller
Read the
Commentary
"Certainly, we are in a period of
decentralization abetted by instant laptop communication and the
diaspora of creative minds no longer leashed to cities."
Seattle Times
Like Density? Imagine our Home with 50 Million People
By James Vesely
Read the
Commentary
Too many
are still fixed on the "old economy" and try to lure
employers interested in low-wage workers, Kotkin says. This is
their big mistake. In the new economy, those places lose.
The Greenville News
Today's cities either have what it takes or they die
By Jeanne Brooks
Read the
Commentary
The shortly after
the victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger, anger was still so strong
that an earthquake of 3.6 on the scale of Richter was not even
mentioned by regional television, all occupied commenting on
another calamity: the "perfect storm", as the media
say, which had been right of the governor Gray Davis. "It
is" perfect "because it comes from various permanent
or accidental factors, explains Joel Kotkin, famous essayist and
sociologist of the Pepperdine university of Los Angeles. A
governor fadasse and cut population, a tax and economic crisis,
a faintness identitaire born from the demographic explosion. And
power failures." Only that.
L'express - France - Moun.com
Le rêve brisé
By Philippe Coste
Read the Commentary
(en Francais)
Culture-based
growth has been a disappointment in other cities,'' Kotkin
wrote. "In downtown San Jose, more than $1 billion in
public and private funds has been poured into museums, shops,
hotels and theater over the last 20 years. Today, the facilities
are largely deserted and failing. Once vying to become the
'capital of Silicon Valley,' central San Jose remains an
economic laggard, suffering among the highest rates of
unemployment and office vacancies in the nation.''
San Jose Mercury News
L.A. writer offers hint of
San Jose's image
By Leigh Weimers
Read the
Commentary
Companies are established where the gray matter is
present. The old mining cities of the south and the west suffer from this
process which touches also certain districts of large cities in which the gap
between the poor and rich person grows.." (in French)
World Summit of Cities and Local Authorities on the Information Society
Lyon - December 4-5th
The New
Geography de Joel Kotkin
Gilles Puel
Read the
Commentary
Blacks
have stood passively on the sidelines of business enterprise. Author
Joel Kotkin was being kind when he referred to native-born black Americans
as “reluctant entrepreneurs.” But when Kotkin examined the median
income of U.S. black families of Caribbean ancestry, he found that it
actually exceeded the level of whites. And the source of these
West-Indian blacks’ success was their strong interest in running small
businesses.
American Enterprise
Online
The Crying Need for Black Entrepreneurship
By Tony Brown
Read the
Commentary
Around the
country some older suburbs have declined, as jobs, people and
investment have moved to edge cities and newer suburbs. Others
have remade themselves, reinvigorating neighborhoods and
rebuilding commercial areas to fill niches that big-box stores
don't serve.
Sacramento Bee
Last rites for hapless Uncity?
By Mark Paul
Read the
Commentary
Social
scientists such as Terry Nichols Clark at the University of
Chicago and public policy researchers such as Joel Kotkin at
Pepperdine University have pointed out that innovators who drive
the economy in Cities of Ideas tend to believe social justice
and freedom in the marketplace are not incompatible values. When
they involve themselves in the community, these innovators tend
to avoid the old organizations.
Glimmer of Hope.org
Tech leaders venture into civic affairs
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin said that if the
Democratic establishment had not pressured top-ranking Democrats
to stay out of the recall race to keep support for Davis strong,
stronger candidates like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is Jewish,
“would have creamed Schwarzenegger.”
JTA
Californias Jews try to sort out new political realities after election
By Tom Tugend
Read the
Commentary
Kotkin,
for example, argues that New York is in danger of becoming ''a
way station for immigrants, a temporary sojourn for the upwardly
mobile and a permanent home for the profoundly neurotic.'' (An
ex-New Yorker, Kotkin has apparently spent so much time in
California that he uses ''profoundly neurotic'' as a term of
abuse.)
The New York Times
Back to the Future
By James Traub
Read the
Commentary
New York
City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared early this year, is a
niche product. It's pricey, a high-cost place to do business
that's not for everyone. If you can't afford to be here, the
implication was, try someplace else. For the life of me, I
couldn't imagine how many there are of these cost-insensitive
companies. It left me wondering who will fill the new office
buildings to be constructed as part of downtown's rebuilding,
and those that city officials hope will eventually rise on
Manhattan's West Side. And what would the cost-be-damned
philosophy mean to small businesses, the backbone of the local
economy?
Crain's New York Business
NY will pay for ignoring costs
By Alair Townsend
Read the
Commentary
No one doubts that New York's
globally leading collection of great corporations has been a
massive asset. But their appetite for subsidies depletes the
city's treasury and threatens basic services. Why continue
payoffs, the new report asserts, when the big firms, once
bedrocks of stability, are gobbling each other up,
restructuring, sometimes going bankrupt, all at a time when
technology makes it easier to move skilled jobs?
Houston Chronicle
New York Could Learn from Houston
By Neal Peirce
Read the
Commentary
It's an open secret that Wall Street jobs
are leaving, but other key industries are vanishing, too:
Madison Avenue ad agencies have cut 16 percent of their New York
jobs since 1990, while publishers have trimmed 19 percent.
New York Post
NYC'S Warped Economy
By Nicole Gelinas
Read the
Commentary
The sobering conclusion of the 40-page report is that
New York is in big, big trouble. This isn’t just the usual doom saying about
budget cuts and garbage pick ups. We’re talking about an economic
death-spiral.
New York Sun
Losing the Big Apple’s Core
By William Tucker
Read the
Commentary
Put simply, New York has been losing old industries faster than other
places, and not capturing new ones. Its once-dominant position in
manufacturing has long since been lost to Los Angeles. It is no longer
the automatic place for headquarters. It is home to no big retailer and
it has largely missed the computer and biotech booms. There are venture
capitalists in New York, but, according to the report, their venturous
investments are elsewhere.
The Economist
Two Years On
Read the
Commentary
"...not only has
job growth in the city's securities industry severely
under-performed the region, even during the 1990s market boom,
but "the new jobs being created in financial services...are
increasingly being created outside of New York," says
Jonathan Bowles, research director of the Center, who
co-authored the report with Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the
Davenport Institute of Public Policy at Pepperdine
University."
Small Is Beautiful
Barron's - Review
Read the
Commentary
"New Yorkers can agree that the city is a great place to live and work because of its cultural offerings, its round-the-clock public transportation, its parks, its lively street life, its low crime rate, the vibrancy of its immigrant communities, the easy access to international and national airline flights. But the statistics about job loss and economic growth cited by Mr. Kotkin are worth paying attention to."
The Fargo Challenge
The New York Sun
Editorial & Opinion
Read the
Commentary
Joel Kotkin, one of the country's top urban economists, has
little patience for branding campaigns or civic image-creating
exercises, no matter how well-researched or inclusive."A
city should be identifiable naturally," he said recently
from Los Angeles. "New York is a series of images of New
York. It's that sense of walking down the street with all those
tall buildings and all those lights. Do you think San Francisco
goes and spends money on its image? San Francisco is San
Francisco. L.A. is L.A."
By Bill Steigerwald
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Read the
Commentary
"As Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff recently told The New York
Times, 'We have basically ended the era of corporate welfare, basically paying people to
stay.' The energy which City Hall previously expended on large companies is slowly being redirected toward small start-ups, with small-business advisory offices being opened in each borough."
The New York Observer
The Future of New York
Read the
Commentary
"One answer is for city officials to continue their emphasis on growing businesses in the other boroughs instead of relying heavily on subsidies to keep big companies in Manhattan - a tactic that's losing its effectiveness, as the Center for an Urban Future pointed out."
Enhance NYC; Build Businesses Beyond Manhattan
Newsday - Editorial
Read the
Commentary
" New York has been far less successful than other cities-and some of its own suburbs-in cultivating a meaningful tech sector. And New York lags behind other cities as an incubator of growth companies of all types; despite its storied past as an entrepreneurial hotbed, the city is now regarded as one of the least conducive environments for new enterprises."
Moving Ideas
Read the
Commentary
"the city’s population has been halved since 1950. Young people have
fled for sunnier economic and cultural climes. And huge hunks of the organic
urban landscape have been destroyed or stripped of human life forever by a
clueless troika of urban planners, politicians and corporate leaders."
"Cities must 'regenerate,' not 'rebuild'"
By Bill Steigerwald
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Read the
Commentary
"Of
the 8.3 million workers who filled out the form on census night
in August 2001, 126,000 defined their occupation as computing
professionals: systems manager, systems designer, software
designer, applications & analyst programmer, systems
programmer, computer systems auditor and other ‘computing
activities’. This number of computing professionals was up 48
per cent from 85,000 in 1996. It is fair to say that
‘computing professionals’ are on the up and up"
Bernard
Salt
From Nerdistan to the Australian Geek Islands
Property Australia
Read the
Commentary
More and more companies are moving technical operations to heartland communities because they have well educated, hardworking people who can be hired for a reasonable salary and enjoy the quality of life.
Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog
The Real Economy
Read the
Commentary
"Kotkin urged
policymakers to support rural America by moving from a 'system of subsidies and
transfer payments' to policies that encourage venture capitalists and
entrepreneurs. The subsidies sapped the region's creativity, Kotkin wrote, and
changing them could 'help restore both the vitality and self-respect of these
communities.'"
By
Tom Dennis
Editorial
Grand Forks Herald
Read the
Commentary
