Category: Demographics
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Do Virginians Still Love the Exurbs?
As a follow-up to the previous blog post, let me bring to readers’ attention the work of Hamilton Lombard, Demographics & Workforce research specialist for the Weldon Cooper Center. In a May blog post, his analysis of census data in Virginia led to this conclusion: “The recession significantly altered the growth patterns in Virginia, smoothing…
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Do Americans Still Love the Suburbs?
by James A. Bacon One of the hottest debates today among urbanists and economic geographers is the extent to which population growth and development are shifting from the periphery of U.S. metropolitan areas back to their urban cores. The latest contribution to this discussion, “Even after the Housing Bust, Americans Still Love the Suburbs,” by…
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Has “Peak Car” Arrived?
by James A. Bacon Worried about “peak oil?” Never fear, the world also may be reaching “peak car,” to borrow a phrase coined this summer by Scientific American. The average American is driving less and less each year — a trend matched by the citizens of economically advanced democracies across the globe, from France and…
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Scary Stuff Out of New Kent’s Tea Party
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (K-12), Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka If you read some bloggers on this site, you come away with the idea that conservatives are one, big happy tent where everyone is welcome. They are the new inclusivity; open to “ethnics” such as Hispanics, African-Americans, Indian-Americans and others. As they become educated, earn more money and move up the food…
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The Great Re-Migration and the Coming Realignment of African-American Voters
In a reversal of the Jim Crow-era “great migration,” African-Americans are leaving failed cities in the north and returning to the South, writes Daniel Disalvo in a recent City Journal essay. But they’re not moving back to the poor, rural counties their ancestors hailed from, nor are they moving back to the inner city. The…
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Talking the Talk, Walking the WalkUp
Momentum is shifting decisively from the traditional model of auto-centric development associated with “suburban sprawl” to WalkUps, the term that urbanist Christopher B. Leinberger has coined for Walkable Urban Places. Not only that, contends Leinberger in a new paper, “D.C.: The WalkUP Wake-Up Call,” but the Washington region stands at the vanguard of the national…
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Immigration Fuels Virginia’s Population Growth
Immigration from other states and from abroad continues to boost Virginia’s population growth, and the Demographics & Workforce Group of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service has the details in a new analysis. Between 2005 and 2009, an estimated 283,000 people moved into the state from other parts of the U.S. while 253,000 left,…
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Don’t Mess with Down Home
By Peter Galuszka Steamy and sticky in the late-summer humidity, U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk has the milieu of the Deep South with its rusting peanut processing plants, red brick small towns and the straight-as-an-arrow mainline of the Norfolk Southern slicing through occasional roads with warning lights at the sides. These days, curious little roadside…
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The Entertainment Economy — Double-Edged Sword
by James A. Bacon As robots, artificial intelligence and other labor saving innovations penetrate the economy, traditional jobs that entail making things or providing routine services — Toro is testing a robotic lawn mower for golf courses, for Pete’s sake — could disappear. The only jobs that will be left, it seems, are those in…
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Hottest July on Record!
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Taxes, Water-waste water‘Nuff said. — PAG
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Virginia Scores No. 5 in Creative Class Ranking
Economic geographer Richard Florida has published a new book, “The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited,” and now that he’s blogging for The Atlantic, he’s publishing a lot of his data on his blog. Good news for fans of his creative-class analysis. I was pleased to see that the Old Dominion ranks fifth in the…
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A Birds-Eye View of a Medical Practice
By Peter Galuszka Reforming health care is perhaps the most important issue confronting Virginia and the country today and also one of the most contentious. One hears opinions and solutions of every ilk anywhere — on blogs like this one, television, newspapers and private conversations. One important turn came when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld…
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The Dangerous Online Education Craze
By Peter Galuszka Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell sure seems to love lobbyists. When it came time select someone to be co-chairman of a “summit” on education in August, he chose James W. Dyke Jr., a former state secretary of education who is now a registered lobbyist for the big-time online, for-profit companies as The…
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Richmond’s Buses To Nowhere
By Peter Galuszka Inner city issues seem to be a trend this week on the blog so here are a few more points about the so-called “under-class” as some define lower income, under privileged people. The locus is Richmond, the state capital that despite its pretensions is actually a working class town with plenty of…