Urban Policy

Three kinds of boomtowns have emerged in the last decade. The dot-com era created brainy, culturally savvy, "hip" cities such as Boston, San Francisco, Berlin, Montreal and Sydney. But they turned into very expensive places in which to do business and for the middle class to live.

Low-cost cities became the new boomtowns after the bubble economy burst in 2000. Business and tech firms headed to Phoenix, Reno and Fort Myers, FL, and other no-nonsense, middlebrow places.… more

Jane Jacobs, the urban thinker who died last month at age 89, might say Boston has it about half right.

In her classic 1961 treatise, ''The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Jacobs lauded such places as Boston's North End, and she would no doubt nod approvingly at the neighborhood's continued bustle and human-scale streetscape. But its makeover from multigenerational ethnic enclave to haven for well-heeled professionals might make her cringe.

That kind of change, which has… more

Former Senior Fellow

David Friedman was a New America Senior Fellow from March 2000 through March 2007.Friedman is an attorney, political scientist, economic development specialist, author, and columnist. In addition to his law degree, he holds a Ph.D. from MIT in international politics, where he won an award for the “Best… more

Senior Research Fellow, Economic Growth Program

Joel Kotkin is an internationally recognized authority on global economic, political, and social trends. He is the author of six books, including, The City: A Global History (Modern Library, 2005), as well as the bestseller, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape (Random House, 2002).… more

The Liberal-Left Establishment has never liked suburbia and exurbia, which are dismissed as "sprawl." And we know what the Liberal Left thinks of the Catholic Church. So what do you suppose Liberal Lefties think about a plan for a Catholic exurb? Talk about a bad twofer, in their eyes. Even worse, the new town of Ave Maria, Florida is being bankrolled by Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, the leading conservative Catholic philanthropist in the world. Yikes! No wonder it's… more

OK, So Johnnie Cochran was no George Washington. But the late civil rights attorney is certainly as deserving of having a school named after him as is George Washington's Virginia plantation.

Last month, the Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously to change the name of Mount Vernon Middle School, which Cochran attended in the 1950s, to Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School. Likewise, the City Council is poised to rename a three-block section of 17th Street, where the… more

The West's great cities face serious challenges, with terrorists plotting to blow them up even as jobs and capital flee to the low-cost havens of the developing world. However, from Sydney to San Francisco, the political imperative all too often has been not to look for ways to stay safe or competitive, but instead how to make cities cool and hip.

To many public officials, the key to building a great city in the 21st century lies… more

Last September's tragedy in New Orleans revealed, in the starkest manner, the soft underbelly of America's cities. After all the 1990s rhetoric insisting that "Cities are back!" we got a glimpse behind the facades of a major urban center and tourist mecca which revealed many utterly dependent and disorganized residents, looking more like Third Worlders than denizens of a modern metropolis. In the process, the urban liberalism that has dominated city administration for the last generation was unmasked.

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The last great frontier for upward mobility in California extends from the far eastern suburbs of greater Los Angeles to the Sierra foothills in Northern California. It is there that the "California dream"--a place to create a new life and raise a family--is still possible. Call it the "Third California."

That may come as a surprise. Some coastal residents regard inland California as a failed geography of rising poverty, crummy jobs and unremitting ugliness. But in recent years, more and… more

As California's first large urbanized region, the Bay Area has a long and compelling history as a center of city life. When Fresno was little more than a couple of shacks and Los Angeles a gunslinger's cow town, San Francisco already saw itself as a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city.

Yet today, this cherished ideal of the Bay Area as a neatly organized, dense urban center is increasingly archaic. The suburbs are starting to take over. Long anxious to see itself as… more