Americans still prefer suburbs over cities
Anyone following national and local news media the past decade would expect that population growth has shifted in recent years from the suburban periphery to the inner city. The suburbs, intoned The...
View ArticleThe meaning of the baby bust
With a stronger economy and a growing number of women of child-bearing age, Americans should be producing offspring at a healthy clip. But the most recent data suggest that this is not happening, as...
View ArticleCalifornia for whom?
“Old in error,” writes historian Kevin Starr, “California remains an American hope.” Historically, our state has been a beacon to outsiders seeking a chance, from gold miners and former Confederates to...
View ArticleJerry Brown’s housing hypocrisy
Jerry Brown worrying about the California housing crisis is akin to the French policeman played by Claude Rains in “Casablanca” being “shocked, shocked” about gambling at the bar where he himself...
View ArticleCalifornia’s racial politics harming minorities
Across the country, white voters placed Donald Trump in office by a margin of 21 points over Clinton. Their backing helped the GOP gain control of a vast swath of local offices nationwide. But in...
View ArticleGen Xers mark the spot in California
Generation X, the group between the boomers and the millennials, has been largely cast aside in the media and marketing world, victims of their generation’s small size and lack of identity. In contrast...
View ArticleLeaving California? After slowing, the trend intensifies
Given its iconic hold on the American imagination, the idea that more Americans are leaving California than coming breaches our own sense of uniqueness and promise. Yet, even as the economy has...
View ArticleCalifornia’s coming youth deficit
Images of California, particularly the southern coast, are embedded with those associated with youthfulness — surfers, actors, models, glamorous entrepreneurs. Yet, in reality, the state — and the...
View ArticleThe great transit rip-off
Over the past decade, there has been a growing fixation among planners and developers alike for a return to the last century’s monocentric cities served by large-scale train systems. And, to be sure,...
View ArticleCalifornia politicians not serious about fixing housing crisis
California’s political leaders, having ignored and even abetted our housing shortage, now pretend that they will “solve it.” Don’t bet on it. Their big ideas include a $4 billion housing subsidy bond...
View ArticleTrump’s infrastructure plan is a rare, and potentially bipartisan, feel good...
President Trump’s proposed trillion dollar plus infrastructure program represents a rare, and potentially united feel good moment. Yet before we jump into a massive re-do of our transportation, water...
View ArticleCalifornia’s housing crisis and the density delusion
Once seen as a human-scale alternative to the crowded cities of the past, California’s cities are targeted by policy makers and planners dreaming of bringing back the “good old days,” circa 1900, when...
View ArticleA generation plans an exodus from California
California is the great role model for America, particularly if you read the Eastern press. Yet few boosters have yet to confront the fact that the state is continuing to hemorrhage people at a higher...
View ArticleRestoring the California Dream, not nailing its coffin
Virtually everyone, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, is aware of the severity of California’s housing crisis. The bad news is that most proposals floating in Sacramento are likely to do very little to...
View ArticleDensification efforts like SB50 are the wrong fix to California’s housing...
For decades California’s regulatory and tax policies have undermined our middle class, driving millions out of this most favored state. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in a drive that seeks to...
View ArticleCalifornia’s inept central planners
Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Legislature and the state’s bureaucracy claim to be addressing the state’s much discussed “housing crisis.” But rather than improve the state’s awful affordability crisis, the...
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