Another old part of London is to be spanking new again. 11 years after the exhibition centre was demolished, 160 years after railways arrived, >900 years since the de Vere family first built their eponymous manor house, Earl’s Court is being remade from the cleared earth. But..

The youthening of rural America H/T Jim Russell We will see a reversal of the aging of rural America. It will become youthful as young people bail out of the expensive houses and long commutes of mega cities to build companies, lives, families and communities. Land in most of the country is dead cheap and communities can form to raise capital to build whatever they want. With remote work steady at 25% and projected to increase to 35%-50% as the current generation of CEOs retires (Nick Bloom for the 35% number) the vast US rural land mass is opening up. Today most of nominal GDP is “created” in 0.1% of the land mass (aka Cities). But the talent that actually drives the value cascades are often not there anymore. They are living in villages, hamlets, farms and small towns where they can provide the best experience for their families. The shift in the value of the $70 trillion in US Real Estate value from the 0.1% of landmass to the other 99.9% will be epochal. Many RE investors and city managers do not realize that they are swimming naked and that the tide is going down. Very few small towns and villages are truly maximizing on this opportunity. They should be Talent Magnets and Baby Factories. This does not mean the end of cities. It does mean that cities and especially city neighborhoods need to compete to become Talent Magnets. 🧲 All this, and more, was predicted starting in 2019 and captured in the book “Knowledge Towns” by David Staley and myself, which we wrote in the summer of 2021 and was published last year lnkd.in/eWSZSXZa Knowledge Towns lnkd.in/eZekjEjK cardinalnews.org/2024/12/18/….

This is very very good modern #GentleDensity which rhymes with the past & looks to the future …

In US cities, ~2/3 of crash deaths occur on streets owned by the state – not local gov. Outdated, deadly state roads are preventing cities from building the safe, comfortable, and transit-friendly streets residents want. My deep dive, in @voxdotcom vox.com/future-perfect/38456…

Trams are good for drivers as well as places....

With the topic of town building rightly back on the agenda the Phoenix development may help to show us how it's done

It's time for trams

¡Viva! Streets Denver is a community event series that makes 3.5 miles of streets in downtown Denver car-free on 4 Sundays over the summer. Time and time again we see experiments like these succeed—we just need to make them permanent!

A few people (actually quite a lot) have asked me what I think of recent announcements on “the war on motorists.” Here is my reply which I suspect will annoy people on both sides … createstreets.com/street-fig…