Superstar Cities vs the Creative Class
Lately, there is mucho academic interest in explaining why some cities are successful and others not. What do you mean by success? In this instance, generally market indicators rather than social ones. Economists tend to focus on real estate prices as a summary indicator, while economic development scholars might pay more attention to job growth [...]
Suburbanization and Its Discontents
Planners as therapists/entrepreneurs/office managers, or Random highlights from Harvard Design Magazine About 10 years ago, I gave a presentation with the title of this post for a conference on sprawl. There was talk of the conference proceedings becoming a book, so there was a plan to turn the talk into a chapter. Neither materialized. This [...]
The Meaning and Measure of Sprawl
Planners do not like sprawl one little bit and who can blame them? I once heard urban designer Doug Kelbaugh sneeringly describe sprawl as “a smear on the landscape.” Who likes a smear? Definitions Let’s concede that the discussion of what sprawl is and is not covers an awful lot of ground, even if we [...]
Why Do the Poor Live in Cities?
The title of this post is borrowed from a 2000 NBER working paper by Glaeser, Kahn and Rappaport. Starting with the assertion, “that the concentration of poverty in central cities occurs mainly because such cities attract poor people, not because central cities make people poor,” (p. 1) it asks why. Now that‘s a planning research [...]
Blog Review: Jonathan Levine’s "Zoned Out," RFF, 2005.
This scrappy, thoughtful book makes the provocative claim that the causes and consequences of sprawl are less about the excesses of private markets than the excesses of planning. More to the point, Levine says that unrestrained zoning in favor of modern single-family, suburban housing has so distorted land market decisions that much of the research [...]
Latest Evidence on Gender & Travel
Virtually all studies on the subject over the past few decades show strong evidence that women, as a group, persistently drive differently than men. Historically, their licensing rates were much lower, their commutes were shorter, and they took more trips overall. One explanation was their disproportionate burden of household-centered responsibilities. All in all this argued [...]
Blog Review: "One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s First Suburbs," Brookings, 2006.
Brookings released an analysis of census data last week entitled, “One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s First Suburbs,” by Robert Puentes and David Warren. Random comments: Primarily a demographic profile of what it defines as first ring suburbs from 1950 to 2000, the 2 main stories are that (a) these were and are [...]
Social Capital Mountain
“Social capital” commonly refers to both the extent and value of social relationships. Specific uses in the literature include trust, civic action, cooperative activity, and ties of many kinds, but the underlying concept is clearly much broader. That larger notion has not been fully articulated, however. Indeed, a fundamental critique is that it is relatively [...]
Fat City?
Does sprawl make one fat? It appears that suburban residents are heavier on average, all things considered. That leaves the question of causality, which can be asked at least two ways. Do heavier people tend to move to the suburbs, or does sprawl makes you/me gain weight? In statistical language, as recently put by Matt [...]
Smart Growth as a Research Topic
Let’s say the idea of smart growth is a good one. What are the research questions? We could start with definitions. I am particularly attached to my own. It asserts that the interesting part of smart growth is the deal making process rather than any particular list of best planning practices. My reasoning is that [...]
To PC or not to PC? Researching Walmart
What if your research gives the wrong answer? Marlon Boarnet and I have collaborated on a few projects over the years, almost always for the right reasons. Possibly the most noticed outside the ivory tower are a couple of fairly straightforward reports on Walmart. The first considered how its entry into the grocery markets of [...]
Downtown Inc., Chinese Style
I received a call from an LA Times reporter last week asking about the redevelopment of central city industrial sites for high density residential projects, especially in the San Francisco bay area. (Apparently, John Landis was out of reach.) More than one city, including Oakland, is facing significant opposition to such plans, based in part [...]
Introductory post
Welcome to my web log of developments in “urban planning research.” The plan is to publish commentary related to the scholarship of cities. Why? The first defense is reactionary. There are now many well-read and perhaps influential blogs on academic & policy topics in related areas, such as architecture and economics. Though there are also [...]