What If California Is the Most Regressive State in America?

Almost nowhere in California is building enough, according to the state. Here’s why

California ordered cities and counties to plan for 2.5 million new homes by 2030. Only five jurisdictions are on track to hit their numbers.

Mapped: Greenest Cities in America in 2025

The 2025 ranking of America’s greenest cities reveals San Jose, CA in the #1 spot, followed by Washington, D.C.

NYC: can this city-state be completely self-reliant? | Aeon Essays

Green living in NYC need not be simple living – think skyscraper farms, meat-production towers and revamped aqueducts

A Low-Cost Ownership Oasis in a Desert of Apartment Unaffordability

When this California housing cooperative began more than 30 years ago, it wasn’t the most affordable place to live. But now, it is.

Just How Far Can California Possibly Go on Climate? (Published 2017)

California wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions more than even President Barack Obama had proposed. But can the state pull it off, or will it falter?

The world’s most liveable cities in 2024

Our sister company has rated the best, and worst, cities in which to live

San Francisco Progressives Declare War on Affordable Housing

Opposition to high-density housing is the ultimate in misguided Nimbyism.

Communities Across the Nation Want to Add Housing. Which Metropolitan Areas Are Adding the Most?

Between 2020 and 2025, four Texas metropolitan areas—Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio—accounted for 13.3 percent of total US housing supply growth.

Why Do Americans Have Shorter Life Expectancy and Worse Health Than Do People in Other High-Income Countries?

Americans lead shorter and less healthy lives than do people in other high-income countries. We review the evidence and explanations for these variations in longevity and health. Our overview suggests that the US health disadvantage applies to multiple mortality and morbidity outcomes. The American health disadvantage begins at birth and extends across the life course, and it is particularly marked for American women and for regions in the US South and Midwest. Proposed explanations include differences in health care, individual behaviors, socioeconomic inequalities, and the built physical environment. Although these factors may contribute to poorer health in America, a focus on proximal causes fails to adequately account for the ubiquity of the US health disadvantage across the life course. We discuss the role of specific public policies and conclude that while multiple causes are implicated, crucial differences in social policy might underlie an important part of the US health disadvantage.

The Folk Economics of Housing

Why is housing supply so severely restricted in US cities and suburbs? Urban economists offer two primary hypotheses: homeowner self-interest and political fragmentation. Homeowners, who outnumber and have organizational advantages over renters, are said to lobby against development to protect their property values. The fragmentation hypothesis emphasizes that development's negative externalities are borne locally while most of the benefits accrue regionally or nationally, leading localities to block housing. This paper offers another explanation: ordinary people simply do not believe that adding more housing to the regional stock would reduce housing prices. Across three original surveys of urban and suburban residents, only a minority of respondents say that a large, positive, regional housing supply shock would reduce prices or rents. These beliefs are weakly held and unstable (suggesting people have given the issue little thought), but respondents do have stable views about who is to blame for high housing prices: developers and landlords. Large, bipartisan supermajorities support price controls, demand subsidies, and restrictions on putative bad actors, policies which they believe would be more effective than supply liberalization for widespread affordability. We discuss the implications of these findings for efforts to expand the supply of housing.

More Housing is Possible: a National Town Hall · Burhan for State Senate

Join Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem and the people behind the Montana Miracle, California’s SB79, and the ROAD to Housing Act to discuss recent wins and what comes next for the housing movement. Speakers will dig into the policy that's moving the needle, the campaigns and organizing that got us here, and how local leadership can turn big ideas into more homes. Expect sharp takes, lively panels, and the collective brainpower of the country's most effective housing advocates in one (virtual) room.

Californians are subsidizing mansion wildfire insurance as FAIR risk explodes

As commercial insurers have fled California in the wake of wildfires, FAIR has become the insurer of first resort for owners of multimillion-dollar properties in exclusive but fire-prone communities.

Californian ideology

Californian ideology refers to the dominant ideology of Silicon Valley, as described by the British media theorists Barbrook and Cameron in their 1995 essay "The Californian Ideology". The ideology is very influential because of the ubiquity of Californian technology products, as well as because siliconization has made it prominent in computing industries all around the world.

RESPONSES TO THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY BY CELIA PEARCE

The publication of 'The Californian Ideology' has inspired an impassioned debate over the issues raised by the article. Here is a selection of some of the most interesting responses to the piece:

Higher Wages for Early Care and Education Workers Builds a Stronger System

Higher wages for early care and education workers in California is critical to expanding affordable child care.

The Color of Power — Oakland Public Library

The Color of Power — Douzet, Frédérick — <p></p><p> <i>The Color of Power </i>is a fascinating examination of the changing politics of race in Oakland, California. Oakland has been at the forefront of California’s multicultural changes for decades. Since the 1960s, the city has been a shining example of a fruitful liberal black-and-white political partnership and the successful incorporation of black politicians into the political landscape. But over the past forty years, the balance of power has changed as a consequence of dramatic demographic trends and economic circumstances. The city’s formerly dominant biracial political machine has been challenged by the demands of new multiracial interests.</p><p></p><p>The city, once governed by a succession of black mayors and majority black city councils, must now accommodate rapidly growing Asian and Latino communities. While the black-led coalition still relies on white progressive support, this alliance has weakened due to a shift in the progressives’ agenda and the voting habits of the black community, the rise of a Hispanic-Asian coalition, and a strong demographic decline of the African American population. With similar demographic changes taking place across the nation, Oakland’s experience provides insight in to the multiracial future of other American cities.</p><p></p><p> <i>The Color of Power</i> investigates Oakland’s contemporary racial politics with a detailed study of conflicts over issues like education, elections and political representation, and crime. Trained as a journalist, a political scientist, and a geographer, the author provides a unique perspective supported by numerous maps and extensive interviews.</p><p>Winner of awards from the French Society of Geography and the French National Academy of Sciences</p><br/>Trained as a journalist, a political scientist, and a geographer, the author provides a unique perspective supported by numerous maps and extensive interviews.<p>Winner of awards from the French Society of Geography and the French National Academy of Sciences</p>