My latest article is online in City Journal and is a look at the most recent failed attempt to merge St. Louis city and St. Louis county governments in light of the backdrop of civic challenges there. Here's an excerpt: Better Together, a drive to consolidate the governments of St. Louis County and its towns with the city of St. Louis, was over almost before it started. Following political blowback and the indictment of the St. Louis County executive who would have run the merged government, backers withdrew the proposal. But the problems that … [Read more...]
The Midwest’s Small Suburbs
I've been examining data lately, revisiting a topic I'm mentioned in the past, namely the smaller sizes of suburbs in Midwest cities compared to other parts of the country. This applies to much of the US east of the Mississippi as well. West of that river, there are a number of states and regions where there are large suburbs, some of them ranking among the largest municipalities in the country. For example, here are the ten largest suburbs of Dallas-Ft.Worth: Suburb Population Arlington, TX 398,112 Plano … [Read more...]
Reinventing City Procurement
Procurement in any context sounds dull and has the reputation of being a painful task you are forced to go through in order to buy something you need. Sascha Haselmayer of CityMart believes there's a different way. He joins me on the podcast to talk about cities using procurement as a problem solving process and engine of government transformation, including radically improving supplier diversity. If the audio player doesn't display for you, click over to listen on … [Read more...]
The Plight of the Midsized Midwest Industrial City
Bloomberg's Justin Fox tweeted out a link to this piece from a professor in Peoria, Illinois who left a coveted tenure-track position because he couldn't bear the thought of living there. Here's an excerpt: What this all boiled down to is that it was massively detrimental to my health and well-being to live in a dying Rust Belt city by myself. And my “solution” to that problem – moving to Chicago and driving seven hours round-trip to work – was never anything but a stopgap that negatively affected me in different ways. … People have … [Read more...]
The Quest for Human Flourishing
I recently sat down with Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Harvard School of Public Health. He's also the director of the Human Flourishing Program, which was the subject of our recording. What is human flourishing? What is the state of it in society today? What can we do to improve our own personal flourishing? We discuss these and other questions in our podcast. If the audio player doesn't display for you, click over to listen on … [Read more...]
A New Mayor for Chicago and Congestion Pricing for New York
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...]
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 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...]
What Can We Do For America’s Most Challenged Cities?
My latest Manhattan Institute study was just released, discussing the particular difficulties facing America's most distressed cities. Post-industrial metro areas with less than one million people that have experience significant decline are in a different category than other places. In addition to demographic and employment challenges, they tend to have low end economies, low levels of educational attainment, and very few elite caliber assets such as an R1 research university around which to rebuild. I suggest that speculative economic … [Read more...]
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