My colleague Nicole Gelinas and I recorded a podcast for City Journal recently about recent developments in New York and Chicago. She talked about New York's approval of congestion pricing and I covered the Chicago mayoral election. If the audio player doesn't display for you, click over to listen on Soundcloud. https://soundcloud.com/aaronrenn/updates-on-chicago-new-mayor-and-new-york-congestion-pricing Subscribe to podcast via iTunes | Soundcloud. Cover image credit: Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0 … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2019
New Census Estimates Reveal Continuing American Divergence
The Census Bureau today released new county and metro area level estimates for population. In my latest article for City Journal, I take a look at some of the trends. Here's an excerpt: Ninety-four metro areas, representing about a quarter of the nation’s total, lost population last year on a region-wide basis. This includes nine major metros of more than 1 million people. Among them were the three biggest: New York (down 19,474 people, or 0.10 percent), Los Angeles (down 7,223, or 0.05 percent), and Chicago (down 22,068, or 0.23 … [Read more...]
The Future of the Urbanophile
As you've probably noticed, there's been a slow-down in the posting frequency in 2019. Last year I tried to publish almost every business day. That was going well and readership was up. But it was also very time consuming. So I made the decision to cut back and essentially eliminate blogging. My plan is to continue to post here the articles and such that I do elsewhere, and also podcast episodes as I create them, but not to do much in the way of blogging that's original to this site, though I may still do some from time to time. The truth … [Read more...]
The Philadelphia Revival Story
My latest piece will be in this Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer but is already available online now. It's about the nascent revival in Philadelphia over the past decade, and its relevance, or rather lack of relevance, to many other struggling cities in Pennsylvania. Here's an excerpt: In many ways the city has been ideally positioned for new economy success. The Philadelphia metro area is a very large region of 6.1 million people in an era in which larger cities have been growing faster. Philadelphia has a highly educated population, … [Read more...]
Chicago: Past, Present, Future
I gave a talk recently at the Chicago Booth School of Business about Chicago and while I was not able to record it, I decided to reprise my talk as a podcast. I give a very brief narrative overview of the city's history, it's present day strengths, the challenges it faces, and ideas for the future. If the podcast doesn't display for you, click over to listen on Soundcloud. https://soundcloud.com/aaronrenn/chicago-past-present-future Subscribe to podcast via iTunes | Soundcloud. Featured image credit: Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0 … [Read more...]
Changing the Chicago Way?
My latest piece is online at City Journal, and is about the election yesterday of Lori Lightfoot as Chicago's next mayor: Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor of Chicago on Tuesday, defeating Cook County Board of Commissioners president Toni Preckwinkle. Lightfoot, who swept all 50 city wards, won by a 74-to-26 margin that rivals the biggest election routs of Richard M. Daley. She becomes the city’s first black female mayor, making Chicago the largest city ever to elevate a black woman (who is also gay) to executive power. In choosing Lightfoot, … [Read more...]