21st Century neighborhoods

Just finished reading the End of the Suburbs by Leigh Galagher, assistant managing editor at Fortune. Highly recommended. She details, with data and stories, the new reality that more and more Americans want to live in high density, walkable, mixed use neighborhoods. Where walking and transit are as important as driving. That the odds are […]

Not picking industries

I am a skeptic when it comes to government –– national, state and local –– picking industries –– either old ones to save or new ones to stimulate –– as an effective economic growth strategy. Although it is true most of the folks I work with and respect don’t agree. They are far more representative […]

21st Century transportation

What concerns me most about Michigan’s politics is how much of it, on a bi-partisan basis, seems designed for the 20th Century. We seem to be having a hard time learning what made us prosperous in the past, won’t in the future. Our fixation on trying to once again make Michigan a factory-based state is […]

The economic case for density

In two recent New York Times posts Paul Krugman has explored the economic benefits dense regions enjoy compared to those characterized by sprawl. They are worth checking out. The first looks at the Detroit bankruptcy. Its entitled “A Tale of Two Rust-Belt Cities“. Krugman asks: “Here’s a question: is the crisis in Detroit simply a […]

My Detroit Free Press op ed

The Free Press published Sunday an op ed I wrote about the current Michigan economic recovery compared to that in the early Eighties. You can read it here. For those interested in more of the details that the op ed is based on you can find them in four posts I have written for this […]

Detroit collapsing

The best commentaries on the Detroit bankruptcy I have read are a Forbes article entitled “The Unions Didn’t Bankrupt Detroit, But Great American Cars Did” and a Robert Samuelson column for Real Clear Politics entitled “Reinventing Detroit”. Both make the point that the chief cause of Detroit’s collapse is the region (not just the city) […]

Unlimited charters: not smart updated

Nearly two years ago I wrote a post entitled Unlimited charters: not smart. Using data for charter schools serving Detroit students –– then and now the epicenter of charters in Michigan –– it made the case that authorizers had not earned the right to charter an unlimited number of new schools. Student achievement was too […]

From factories to knowledge-based III

Lets complete our exploration of the changing structure of the American economy with a look at the Great Lakes State which is doing best on the “more and better jobs” goal that Governor Snyder has set: Minnesota. The different path it and Michigan have traveled the last two decades clearly demonstrates the path to prosperity […]