The Wall Street Journal

"If New York City is a business, it isn’t Wal-Mart -- it isn’t trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market. It’s a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product. New York offers tremendous value, but only for those companies able to capitalize on it."

-- Mayor Michael Bloomberg, January 2003

These seem the best of times for America’s elite cities. Wall Street’s 2006 megabonuses created thousands of instant millionaires, and, with their venture-fund soulmates in places like San Francisco,… more

LOS ANGELES -- Amidst the Republican rout, some important political lessons can be drawn from the results in California. Oft dismissed by conservatives as "the left coast" and written off as hopelessly blue, the state election revealed some critical trends that may prove decisive -- for both parties -- in 2008 and beyond.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 17-point victory alone commands some attention, since it is easily the most impressive score by any Republican in a Democratic-leaning state this year -- and it… more

The fact that the U.S. population will soon top 300 million has led some environmentalists to gnash their teeth over the nation’s ability to handle our expanded "ecological footprint." One can also imagine that few champagne bottles are being popped in Parisian salons.

And there’s even worse news ahead for those who hate the notion of numerous Americans: By 2050 there will be 400 million of us. This surge marks a major watershed in our history, recreating the American Republic and… more

RALEIGH, N.C. -- When graduate students at North Carolina State University took their seats on the first day of a class called Services Management, the kickoff lecture wasn't delivered by a professor. Instead, it was given by a manager from International Business Machines Corp.

The company, in fact, helped develop the curriculum and awarded grants to the school with the expectation that the course would be taught -- all with the aim of producing graduates better prepared to work for… 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

The announcement in London yesterday of the dismantling of a major terror plot against American passenger flights between Britain and the U.S. provided fresh evidence that the threat of terrorism -- whether inflicted by the militant jihadist movement al Qaeda or inspired by it -- is still very much with us. The arrival, then, of Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, a deeply researched history of al Qaeda, is welcome and timely. This is a largely Egyptian and Saudi tale, one… more

Satellite companies, cable providers and small telephone companies are vying for stakes in a precious slice of the nation's airwaves as they seek to provide the wireless Internet and phone services that consumers increasingly demand.

The Federal Communications Commission will kick off one of its largest auctions of radio spectrum next Wednesday, and dozens of companies -- including many that aren't traditional wireless-industry players -- have qualified to bid.

Cellular operators like T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless will be… more

Israel's escalating incursion into Lebanon -- with bombing attacks on Beirut's airport and a naval blockade -- could turn its border fight with militant Islamists into a regional war that Israel is openly warning might lead to Syria, and beyond that to Iran.

Already the violence has engaged the Israeli military on two fronts, against Hezbollah militias in Lebanon to the north and Hamas forces that control the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip to the west. But with… more

In his 2004 book, "The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It," Phillip Longman exploded one of the planet's most enduring modern myths. He demonstrated that population growth is not the threat that it has been made out to be and that population decline is the real challenge ahead of us.

By the time of the book's publication, many developed nations were already struggling to address the obvious result of falling fertility: What to… 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