The New Urban Order

Noteworthy: The paid list gets 12 job listings from my LinkedIn this week, plus the paywalled content. Seattle and DC added families with children last decade, bucking the trend. Urban Institute research on Hurricane Helene survivors shows disaster recovery isn’t a single event but a slow drain on savings, credit, and mental health.

Odds and Ends: Just a reminder: we’ve chosen Living, Together by Samantha Paige Rosen for the next Book Club. The book features 21 writers and organizers on chosen family, hacking adulthood, and other lessons communal living can teach us about the future of housing in America. Our Book Club chat — September 14 at 6pm -- will include Rosen and Gillian Morris of the Substack, Supernuclear. The paid list gets 11 new job listings from my LinkedIn below the paywall.

Odds and Ends: Last week, the paid list got my postcard from Dublin, which describes some of the ways that Dublin is different — or not so much — from the U.S. I’m also back to including job listings from my LinkedIn feed at the bottom of my emails. Sorry, I stopped doing this since I couldn’t tell if people valued them or not, but I have gotten feedback that people want them back. I’ll have 5-10 job listings in each post from now on.

Thank you paid subscribers! One of the perks of being on the paid list is that you get some extra content, including these occasional postcards from personal trips. I just want to say that I really appreciate each and every one of you. Getting paid subscribers is hard – keeping them even harder! I never take for granted that you have stuck with me and t…

Odds and Ends: I love that NYC has created a Parents’ Night Out program to provide free babysitting at rec centers so parents can go out on a date. It’s a great counter to the notion that we have a fun shortage due to the high cost of activities these days. The first global convening on informal and shared mobility is happening in Bangkok this October. Here’s my list of the other conferences worth attending this fall.

Hey readers, I’m excited to announce the next Book Club. We’ve chosenLiving, Together by Samantha Paige Rosen. The book features 21 writers and organizers on chosen family, hacking adulthood, and other lessons communal living can teach us about the future of housing in America. Save the Date for the Book Club chat — September 14 at 6pm -- and join us for a conversation about the book and issues surrounding communal living more broadly.

Hey readers, I’m in Pittsburgh for my subscriber event – basically a day and a half of urban exploration. What follows are some reflections from Day One of the tour. Andy Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh, but after he graduated from Carnegie Mellon, he moved to New York City to launch what would become one of the most celebrated careers in 20th century art. Warhol felt he had to move to access New York City’s creative community. But were Warhol alive today, would he feel the same pull?

Why do I have 256 photos of benches on my phone? Because outdoor seating will tell you a lot about a place: what it values, makes space for, tolerates, encourages, and discourages. All photos by Kat Vellos unless otherwise noted A number of years ago, on a trip to Paris, I marveled at the endless miles of bistro chairs, their steady presence a constant sight block after block after block.

For nearly a century, the Sunbelt has been the center of the country’s population growth. The first wave of the Sunbelt boom drew people to Florida, California, Texas, and Arizona. The second wave helped Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and the mountain states like Nevada and Utah to grow. These two waves of population migration reshaped the country’s economic and political centers. Now we are in the Third Wave.

We’ve got a few spots left to the Pittsburgh trip next month. I’ve taken down the paywall so the itinerary is open for all to see. If you’re interested, please do RSVP! I expect this to sell out in the next week. • The age of the solopreneur • A nuanced take on Chevalier’s primary win in NYC • I was quoted on multigenerational living in this New York Magazine article.