Author: James A. Bacon
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VCU: Prime Candidate for a MOOCing
by James A. Bacon I often wonder if higher-education board members can see the forest for the trees. In my mind’s eye, I see university administrations sharing huge volumes of reports and data in thick notebooks — no one can accuse them of a lack of full disclosure. And I imagine most board members (with…
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A Closer Look at Virginia Auto Ownership Patterns
Last week I published maps produced by the Vizual Statistix blog showing the breakdown of car ownership per household across the United States. Virginia appeared as the only East Coast hot spot on the map, with exceptionally high rates of automobile ownership compared to other states. Only limited conclusions could be drawn, I lamented, because…
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Bye, Bye, ‘Burbie
Here’s a trend that ought to set government officials in larger suburban counties across Virginia on edge. U.S. businesses, declares the Wall Street Journal, have entered a new era of “corporate urbanism.” In a reverse of the post-World War II flight from the city to the suburbs, Motorola, United Continental Holdings, Hillshire Brands and other…
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Can McAuliffe Thread the U.S. 460 Needle?
Will Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe reverse one of the biggest legacies of the McDonnell administration, construction of the new U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk? The $1.4-billion, Interstate-grade highway, upon which the McDonnell administration has already lavished $200 million, has cleared all significant hurdles but one: approval by the Army Corps of Engineers. But the project…
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The Disruption of Higher Education
Nathan Harden sees the future of higher education in America — and it’s very much like the future that I see for Virginia’s colleges and universities –except in this essay, “The End of the University as We Know It,” published in The American Interest, he describes it better. Here are some excerpts: Resist or not,…
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How to Get a Meals Tax Passed
by James A. Bacon This past April the Richmond Association of Realtors commissioned a poll to assess the views of Henrico County voters toward a proposed 4% meals tax. When CEO Laura Lafayette reviewed the results, she knew the pro-tax forces faced a major challenge in getting the tax enacted. Respondents opposed the idea 67%…
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Mobility and the Metropolis
If you were born poor in Hampton Roads, you have better odds of rising out of poverty than if you were born into a low-income family in the Washington metro area. Economic segregation varies widely across metro regions in the United States, and so does economic mobility, argues a report published by the Pew Charitable…
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Tiny Homes, Meet Mobile Homes
by James A. Bacon I am tickled by the “tiny homes” movement, which the urbanist blogs treat with a certain reverence. To be sure, tiny homes (under 500 square feet) address a real problem: the unaffordability of real estate in some of the nation’s most desirable metropolitan areas. Tapping creativity and ingenuity to stretch the…
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The Goody Two Shoes State?
I was raised in a family in which profanity was non-existent. The worst word I ever heard my Naval-officer father use was “crap,” and that was only once. As a Baby Boomer, I learned at school to swear some time around the 4th grade (never under-estimate the value of a private-school education), cussed like a…
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Graph of the Day: Virginia State Spending Trends
Every year the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission publishes an overview of Virginia state spending. Perhaps the most important numbers are shown in the chart above — spending adjusted for 10% population growth and 23% inflation. By that measure, General Funding spending held steady over the past decade while Non-General Fund (NGF) budget grew…
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Exposing the Black Friday Parking Myth
by James A. Bacon The Strong Towns blog has published a brilliant piece of crowd-sourced content on the topic of Black Friday parking. Here’s the issue: Smart Growth advocates are highly critical of local government regulations that mandate a minimum number of parking spaces around retail establishments. The resulting expanses of parking lots, they say,…
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Map of the Day: Cars Per Household
What is the most car-loving location east of the Mississippi? You guessed it — this is a Virginia blog, so I wouldn’t have brought it up if the answer weren’t the Old Dominion. The Vizual Statistix blog mapped the average number of vehicles per household for each county (and in Virginia, independent city) and, not…
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Tysons’ Parking Quandary
by James A. Bacon As the first phase of the Rail-to-Dulles Metro line nears opening day, potential riders are asking a basic question: How will they get to the Metro stations? Tysons, the location of four of the five new rail-transit stations, has not geared up to provide new parking. But the higher-density, mixed-use, pedestrian…
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No More Medicaid as Middle-Class Entitlement
by James A. Bacon When legislators debate expansion of Virginia’s Medicaid program in the 2014 session, they would do well to consider the long-term outlook for Medicaid spending. The program already consumes 17% of the state’s general fund budget, and that percentage will grow relentlessly as the population ages. “Virginia faces an onslaught of frail…
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What Are Those Dag Nabbed Old Folks Doing Now?
Virginia typically ranks well in lists of top states for retirees, observes Hamilton Lombard at the StatChat blog, but more 65- to 74-year-olds left the state than moved in over the past decade. As for the college towns that are reputed to be such great retirement magnets, Blacksburg and Charlottesville haven’t seen much of an…