Geography of Aspiration
Places have ambition. In this urban hierarchy, you aim to be New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. In the part of the Rust Belt west of the Cuyahoga River, Chicago is the city of dreams. In any...
View ArticleThe City of the Future: Can Los Angeles Reinvent Itself All Over Again?
This post originally appeared on OnEarth, a Pacific Standard partner site. In the summer of 1998, my wife and I left Brooklyn and gamely headed west to Los Angeles, as disaffected New Yorkers are wont...
View ArticleSilicon Valley’s New Jersey Problem
Allegedly, Silicon Valley is starved for talent. If the region doesn’t get more immigrants, the innovation engine will seize up. Vivek Wadhwa opines about the magic in jeopardy: Soon enough, other...
View ArticleFacebook and Google Are Gentrifying San Francisco Neighborhoods
When we talk about gentrification, we point at people who cause rising rents. We imagine a neglected urban neighborhood rediscovered by artists and then the professional class. We don't consider the...
View ArticleDemise of the Global City
London is dying. The big city used to be a place where the ambitious Creative Class could find upward mobility. No longer: Our neighbors Lauren and Matt and their kids moved out of London to Cambridge...
View ArticleThe Geography of Anti-Gentrification: Google Buses and the World Trade Center
The day after the 9/11 attacks, I had an opportunity to teach 250 students how geography could help make sense of the tragedy. Putting aside the whodunit, I asked my audience to think through the why...
View ArticleCreative Urban Spaces Don't Promote Innovation
Yesterday, I took umbrage at the assertion that the consumer city is good urban planning. The controversy has little to do with urbanism and place-making. Industry competes with "public" amenities for...
View ArticleSan Francisco's Fortress Against Gentrification
For at least 43 years, the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, California, Combined Statistical Area has been the wealthiest region in the United States. For at least 43 years, according to Gary Kamiya,...
View ArticleSan Francisco’s Fortress Against Gentrification
For at least 43 years, the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, California, Combined Statistical Area has been the wealthiest region in the United States. For at least 43 years, according to Gary Kamiya,...
View ArticleA Toast Story
All the guy was doing was slicing inch-thick pieces of bread, putting them in a toaster, and spreading stuff on them. But what made me stare—blinking to attention in the middle of a workday morning as...
View ArticleMove to Dubuque, Not San Francisco
The Innovation Economy is dying. And by that I mean the economy centered in Silicon Valley is converging. And by that I mean the cost for talent is too damn high. Looking under rocks in Dubuque, Iowa:...
View ArticleWhy Technology Firms Are Moving Downtown
The Innovation Economy, that epoch on the heels of manufacturing’s decline, is dying. How do I know? The cost of talent is too damn high. Dave taking me to task and supporting my assertion: You don’t...
View ArticleSan Francisco’s Detroit Moment
“If one were to compare Boston to Detroit in 1960, certainly the judgment would have been that Detroit was the more dynamic metropolis.” By some accounts, Detroit was the wealthiest metro in the United...
View ArticleIt’s Settled: Silicon Valley Is Dying. So What’s Next?
Silicon Valley is the next Detroit. California crumbles and Texas rises. Or so journalist Erica Grieder would have you believe. I assert the forgotten, shrinking Rust Belt stands as the heir apparent...
View ArticleHappy H-1B Visa Day
April Fool’s Day for many, the first day of the month is also opening day for tech firms hoping to snag foreign-born talent. The H-1B visa allows these U.S. companies to hire non-citizens. The total...
View ArticleFaster Justice, Closer to Home: The Power of Community Courts
In the summer of 1993, the New York Times reported on what was, at the time, the start of a three-year experiment in local justice—the opening of the Midtown Community Court in Manhattan. The first of...
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