I rediscovered this blog, my old one, as the result of a Facebook “memory.” In looking back at a post from June 2, 2009, I noticed a typo and corrected it. At first, I thought about taking all the old material down. And then, on second thought, decided to leave it alone. Who knows? At some point in the future, I might want to go back and review the material posted here.
A third test to see if the Urbanexus blog is working once again.
As Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of City and Regional Planning, I have the honor of welcoming 14 young women and 12 young women from North America, South America and Asia to the Urban & Regional Studies Program at Cornell University.
On August 4, 2012, the Sacramento Bee published an article that describes the boom-and-bust nature of that region’s housing market since 1976. Included, is a graphic (see below) that illustrates the location of the thirty metropolitan areas in the USA with the most and fewest quarters when home prices changed by two percent or more.
The folks at Chart-of-the-Day have created (on August 3, 2012) another great graphic display that compares where we are in the recovery of jobs following the Great Recession with average job recovery of all recessions since 1954 and the jobs recovery following the 2001 Technology Bubble Recession. Our current jobs recovery since the end of the Great Recession in June 2009 is similar to that of the recovery of the early 2000s but much slower than the average jobs recovery since the mid 1950s.
When the Bui/Bender residence (pictured below) survived the devastating 1993 fire in the Southern California Coastal town of Laguna Beach, people called it a miracle. The fact that the only damage to the structure was a drainage downspout disloged by a fire hose may have had more to do with the fact that it was designed and constructed in accordance with the principles outlined in this article from Fine Home Building.
On Friday, July 20, 2012, I took several photos on Main Street in Germantown, NY, about 115 miles north of New York City (Manhattan). Two “gems” on this little street are Otto’s Market (established as Central Market in 1927 and reestablished as Otto’s Market in 2006) and the Germantown Variety Store (established 2012.) Both businesses are owned and operated by Otto Leuschel who left an important job at Whole Foods to become the spark plug for the revitalization of this small Hudson Valley town. Otto is doing great work in this little burg. I did not get a chance to ask Otto who his customers are, but I suspect affluent part-time exurbanites and weekend vacationers from the greater New York area are the source of much of his business.
I missed Walter Issacson’s review of Jon Gertner’s book about Bell Labs that appeared in the New York Times this past April. When I finally read it, It reminded me of the key role that Bell Labs played in originating the technology that led to solid state electronics and the Internet–literally changing the world. It seems like we lack a similar institution to help us create the next technological leap.
The URBANEXUS Update for June 10, 2012, features an article by Roger Selbert on America’s Two Economies.
urbanexus 