Southern California writer Joel Kotkin has a new report about urban growth that in many ways is a sequel to his previous report on Opportunity Urbanism. While Opportunity Urbanism focused on Houston, The Broken Ladder look at London, Mexico City, and Mumbai. The common theme is that density is no longer vital to wealth creation, and land-use regulation aimed at achieving such density
has become an obstacle to the upward mobility of low- and middle-income people.
Kotkin also has a great web site, NewGeography, which has numerous contributors and in many ways is an antidote to the anti-suburbs, anti-auto sites that have proliferated across the web. For example, two writers from the center-left New Democrat Network have an article pointing out that a majority of blacks, Latinos, and other minorities all now live in the suburbs, so the old arguments that suburbs were the result of “white flight” is no longer valid.
