Federal income tax is the enemy of urbanism. Finishing my dissertation this year has forced me to come out of my troll-cave and interact a lot more with my econ department.
And that has been a very good thing! There is so much cool economics going on at the University of Michigan that I didn't even know about that I've decided to start blogging about it. Today's interesting nugget comes from UMich prof David Albouy, for whom I briefly worked as a research assistant a few years back. A lot of David's work is in urban economics, which - although I decided not to do my dissertation on it - is an area dear to my heart. I view the deterioration of America's big cities over the past 40 years as a national tragedy, especially after seeing how well big cities work in countries like Japan and Korea. David has zeroed in on one way in which our government stacks the deck against cities: Income tax. The point is not just that this is unfair (as the Times article contends), but that it's inefficient for our economy.
Richard Florida - Authors. Economic, demographic, and political commentary about places.
Water. The-ten-biggest-american-cities-that-are-running-out-of-water: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance. By Charles B.
Stockdale, Michael B. Sauter, Douglas A. McIntyre Some parts of the United States have begun to run low on water. That is probably not much of a surprise to people who live in the arid parts of America that have had water shortages for decades or even centuries. The water problem is worse than most people realize, particularly in several large cities which are occasionally low on water now and almost certainly face shortfalls in a few years. 24/7 Wall St. looked at an October 2010 report on water risk by environmental research and sustainability group Ceres.
The analysis allowed us to choose ten cities that are likely to face severe shortages in the relatively near-term future. Severe droughts that could affect large cities are first a human problem. The ten cities on this list are the ones with the most acute exposure to problems that could cause large imbalances of water supply and demand. Sustainable Urban Mobility in 2020. To make the car of the future, we need to make the city of the future, says MIT designer Ryan Chin.
How can you design a city by designing a car? Today’s automobiles are driven by an increasing number of users who live in cities. The United Nations reported in 2007 that migration patterns and population growth have created an equal split between inhabitants of cities and rural areas for the first time in human history. This general trend will continue for the next several decades and will produce a very urbanized world. In 1950, New York City was the only megacity on the planet, with 10 million occupants. The world’s automobile fleet is currently estimated at 800 million cars that serve the 7.8 billion people living on Planet Earth. Size and Weight 2010: Today’s automobiles weigh an average of nearly 4,000 lb, approximately 20 times the weight of the driver. 2020: Tomorrow’s automobiles will be more lightweight and smaller. Range and Speed Gasoline versus Electric. Worldchanging: Bright Green.
Study uncovers 'de-urbanization' of America. Public release date: 23-Sep-2009 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Brendan M.
Lynchblynch@ku.edu 785-864-8855University of Kansas LAWRENCE — More than any other populace on Earth, Americans are on the move. Because of factors such as employment, climate or retirement, 14 percent of the U.S. population bounces from place to place every year. Now, one researcher at the University of Kansas has made a vital study of how a population in perpetual motion impacts local tax bases and economies around the nation. Art Hall, executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the KU School of Business, said he uncovered three key themes to American population shifts by looking at annual data collected by the Internal Revenue Service on county-to-county migration: He found that "California has been losing people for at least a decade," Hall said. Hall said that income levels on the California coastline have remained consistent, despite the population loss. [ Print | E-mail.
Urbanomics.
Infrastructure. Agricuture.