Richard Florida

A new book dispels the notion that Jane Jacobs opposes new urban developments More »

The Gallup study found a "clear well-being divide between the wealthier countries of northern, western, and central Europe and some poorer countries within eastern and southern Europe." More »

This map from the Gallup Organization shows the well-being levels of the nations of the world. Gallup collected the data through from interviews and telephone surveys with individuals across 155 nations between 2005 and 2009. It distinguishes three categories of well-being - suffering (low levels), struggling (medium levels), and thriving (high levels). More than half of Americans (57 percent) report they are thriving, while 40 percent say they are "struggling,"… More »

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Depending on which calculations you use, Norway could actually be the top country—and the U.S. could be 19th. More »

It's been hard to justify high-speed rail (HSR) projects in terms of conventional cost-benefit analysis. But, it may be time to rethink - and broaden - the way we think of the benefits of HSR. HSR's benefits are usually thought of in terms of lowering transport costs by reducing problems like gridlock, pollution, and travel time. But the real benefit of HSR may turn on its ability to expand economic growth, according to a new analysis by my colleagues at the Martin Prosperity Institute. More »

Earlier this week, I discussed the new Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index of happy cities. Today, with the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, I look at some of the social, demographic, and economic factors that might be associated with the happiness and well-being of cities. More »

Silicon Valley is America's happiest big metro-region and Washington, D.C. is second, according to a new survey of America's 52 largest metro regions by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The Gallup-Healthways data breaks down well-being into six main categories. Greater D.C. leads in life evaluation. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul lead in two categories - emotional health and basic access. Silicon Valley takes first place in two categories as well--… More »

Here's a map of job creation from The Gallup Organization. It's based on approximately 100,000 Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted throughout 2009 with employed adults in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. It provides a clear picture of the evolving economic geography of The Great Reset. On the losing side of job creation, the Rustbelt states, especially Michigan and less so Minnesota, continue to be hard hit, along with the "housing-crash"… More »

Here's a cool map based on over 210 million Facebook profiles (h/t: Jason Rentfrow). Compiled by Pete Warden, it plots the connections between places that share Facebook friends. The map divides the U.S. into seven distinct locational clusters with names like "Stayathomia," "Mormonia," and "Socalistan." More »

It's terrific to see unemployment rate dip below the 10 percent mark. But, unemployment in the Great Reset remains quite a bit deeper than in previous ones, as the NYT's Catherine Rampell shows. The overall U-6 measure of unemployment - which includes discouraged workers - stands at 16.5 percent. A close look at the numbers finds some groups are doing far better than others. Men continue to fare substantially worse than women: The unemployment rate for adult men… More »

Unemployment continues to rise in U.S. metro regions, according to the December figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Unemployment rates were higher in December than a year earlier in 371 of the 372 metropolitan areas and lower in one area," according to the report. The Detroit metro continued to post the highest level of unemployment--14.9 percent But Las Vegas saw the largest increase in their jobless rate, which grew by 4.4 percentage points… More »

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in America. More than 72 million American adults are obese, according to estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics. But obesity varies greatly by state. The map below, from the Centers from Disease Control (CDC), shows the obesity rate for the 50 states, measured as the share of people with a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30 which the CDC classifies as "obese." More »

Even as the economy improves, the unemployment rate continues to grow higher and job creation remains a central issue. Not only does unemployment vary widely across cities and regions, certain places have been able to generate many more new jobs than others. A couple days ago, I posted a chart which compares the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings for America's 50 largest metro areas. It's a pretty good metric of the resilience of job markets in the face of… More »

One in five Americans continue to smoke cigarettes, according to a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The smoking rate varies from low of 9.2 percent in Utah to a high of 26.6 percent in West Virginia. The map below, from the Wall Street Journal, shows the smoking rate by state. More »

If a picture's worth a thousand words, this chart has to be valued more than 10 times that. Detroit is literally off the chart. The big losers, other than the Motor City, are sprawling Sun Belt metros: the Miami, Tampa, Orlando, So-Flo Triangle; So-Cal's once-vaunted Inland Empire, L.A. and San Diego; Las Vegas; Portland; and Rustbelt cities Buffalo, Rochester, and St. Louis. The big winners: D.C. and Baltimore. NY and Boston also do well, along with Silicon… More »

There's no shortage of lists of the world's happiest nations or of the happiest of the 50 U.S. states. The folks at the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index have also compiled detailed happiness scores for America's 435 Congressional Districts (see the map below).The table below shows the 10 highest-scoring and the 10 lowest-scoring congressional districts on the Well-Being Index. The table speaks for itself. The happiest districts are among the most affluent in the… More »

Paul Kennedy famously argued that imperial overstretch -- that is, devoting too much money and resources to military uses -- plays a central role in the decline of great powers, including the United States. But it looks like America's growing obesity epidemic is reducing the pool of capable recruits, according to this story in The Washington Post (via Dana Goldstein). About 75 percent of the country's 17- to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service,… More »

New research by the Gallup Organization finds that 700 million people - 16 percent of the world's total population - would like to move to a different country than the one they currently call home.The first map below shows the percentages of people in various regions of the world that desire to permanently move to another country.The second map shows the places these movers would most like to relocate to.Gallup also compiled a very interesting index of potential… More »

Today, we take it for granted the streets are there to move cars, and also to carry buses as well as cyclists, pedestrians, and the occasional skater, scooter-rider, and Segway user. The typical solution is to keep pedestrians on the sidewalk and paint lanes on the street to separate cars from cyclists or create express lanes for buses.But maybe there's another approach: Why not consider devoting different streets to different kinds of transportation? And… More »