Archive for November, 2009
Your most outragious examples of “urbany”
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009Urbany — Trendwatching.com’s new word for the urban experience lifestyle.
100 years ago, less than 5 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today over 50% call urban areas home and that number could reach 70% within a few decades.
What’s the significance? Urban culture is taking over. As explained by Trendwatcher:
A forever-growing number of more […]
American cities facing challenges
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009As the United States grapples with the worst job losses since World War Two, the nation’s cities need to be centers of solutions and incubators of private sector jobs. Yet, with government bank balances at all levels in the red, finding the resources to provide infrastructure and even maintain basic services will be challenging. Municipalities […]
Apartment living and women’s empowerment
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Back when North American metropolitan areas were laid out, in suburbs connected by freeways, women typically stayed home to raise the 3.9 children that was typical for a woman to have in 1961.
The entire metro area design evolved interconnected with this dominant idea about womanhood as motherhood. Suburbs detached from work areas; malls and shopping […]
Changing urban jobs, new urban lifestyles
Monday, November 9th, 2009How is the changing nature of urban employment changing our cities?
Many cities, particularly in North America, emerged as centers for manufacturing, primary industry and some natural resource processing and trade. In recent decades, manufacturing finished products has become more automated and global. Making primary products like steel has undergone a similar transformation. And many of […]
Urban jobs - tale of two countries
Friday, November 6th, 2009Want to compare urban employment across all major North American cities? and with historical perspective?
Here:’s a graph that allows you to see, on a monthly basis since 2002, the year-over-year job gains or losses.
If you look at the most recent month, across North America, what a “tale of two countries.”
Trick or Treat for a Community
Friday, November 6th, 2009Zillow released a “Trick or Treat” Housing Index last week for Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. Their goal was to assess where a child could score the most candy with the least amount of walking and in a safe place. As they explained:
[We used] four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population […]
H1N1 manufactured panic inconsistent with urban living
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Back in the late spring when the “swine flu” migrated out of Mexico, public health officials and the media quickly told the story of how it was proving to be a widespread, yet reasonably mild influenza virus. Other than people with certain pre-existing conditions, most who contracted it only had mild-to-moderate flu symptoms.
Flash forward to […]