Urban Policy

For years, USC has struggled with its image as a campus in the heart of the inner city and tried to link its fortunes to downtown Los Angeles, a few miles north.

Now, a newly gentrified and hip downtown is marching south, while the university is creeping north. They haven't quite met, but both USC and downtown officials envision a day when the red-brick campus marks the southern edge of the city center...

"Many universities battle this," said Joel Kotkin, the author… more

As US population grows inexorably toward 300 million, there are two visions for the future of American towns and cities. Although very different, each seeks to create a sense of community, a sense of place where none existed before.

One focuses on downtown areas - often run-down, sometimes left as polluted industrial "brownfields." This new kind of urban renewal is seen in places like the trendy Pearl district in Portland, Ore.

The other vision - the most dominant one - is found… more

Cities have always served many functions: as centers of religion, political power, and commerce. But one of their most important tasks has been to serve as engines of upward mobility and aspiration. Nowhere has this been more true than in American cities. From the earliest period of American settlement, European observers were often struck by the remarkable social mobility found in America’s urban centers. The average nineteenth-century American factory worker, whether native-born or an immigrant, enjoyed a far better chance… more

In early 2006, the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, an independent think tank, launched a new initiative to advance its work on public interest spectrum policy by strengthening connections with -- and service to -- diverse public constituencies. NAF enlisted CIMA: Center for International Media Action to convene a group to advise its Wireless Future Program from the perspective of communities that have a vested stake in the debate, but whose interests are not well represented by… more

BISMARCK, N.D. -- At a time when the much-celebrated coasts creak from rising interest rates, faltering income levels and soaring energy prices, this windswept, energy-rich city of 57,000 on the western edge of the Dakota plains is experiencing the best of times. Cities like this one out in the far-off hinterland -- Iowa City, Sioux Falls, Fargo, Grand Forks, Rapid City -- now are enjoying job growth rates that, if they don’t rival Las Vegas, certainly put to shame those… more

For the better part of a half-century, America's leading urbanists, planners, and architects have railed against the growth of suburbia. Variously, the suburbs have been labeled as racist, ugly, wasteful, or just plain boring. Despite the criticism, Americans have continued to vote with their feet for suburban or exurban landscapes. These Americans now include not only whites, but also a growing proportion of recent immigrants, Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. And it's not just people who are moving -- suburbia… more

Before he decided to open a high-end Japanese restaurant in a generic strip mall in southern Cobb County last year, chef Tomohiro Naito considered Midtown ("too expensive to rent") and then an industrial area of Decatur (too much competition from established Chinese eateries).

"I heard this location [on Cobb Parkway] was very favorable," Naito says amid a recent noon-hour rush at Tomo, now touted as one of the best restaurants in metro Atlanta. The proximity to several mega-malls… more

Sorry, city sophisticates, but the metropolis of the future may prove far less intensely urban than you hope. For all the focus on trendy downtowns and skyscrapers, the real growth in jobs and population is likely to take place on the periphery. The new urbanism, built around downtown revival and beloved by the celebrated starchitects, will cede pride of place to the "new suburbanism." And not only in the land of free-ranging suburbs, America.

In contrast to the powers that… more

As part of our annual report, Inc. studied 393 population centers across the nation, identifying job creation and other signs of business vitality. What did we find? The big cities are idling, and the real entrepreneurial hot spots are on the periphery -- where low costs and favorable regulatory environments make it possible to thrive.

Which metropolitan areas are really booming? Here, you'll find a searchable database, the full 2006 rankings broken down by small, medium, and large cities,… more

Even amidst a strong economic expansion, the most recent census data reveal a renewed migration out of our urban centers. This gives considerable lie to the notion, popularized over a decade, that cities are enjoying a historic rebound. The newest figures are troubling on two accounts. Not only are the perennial losers -- Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit -- continuing to empty out, but some of our arguably most attractive cities, like Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago, have lost… more