Joel Kotkin

Contributing Editor, City Journal

Joel Kotkin

Joel Kotkin, an internationally recognized authority on global, economic, political, and social trends, is Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute. He has completed studies on the future of several American cities—including New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Houston, and St. Louis—as well as international cities like London, Mumbai, and Mexico City. Other areas of research include Texas urbanism, the future of localism, the changing role of transit in America, and, most recently, California’s lurch toward feudalism. Mr. Kotkin is the author of many books, the most recent of which are The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class and The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us. He is also co-editor (with Alan Berger) of Infinite Suburbia. Mr. Kotkin is the Executive Editor of the website www.newgeography.com and a regular contributor to City Journal, The Daily Beast, Quillette, American Affairs, and Real Clear Politics.

Described by the New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer,” Joel Kotkin is an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. He authored The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us in 2016 and co-edited, with MIT’s Alan Berger, the 2018 collection Infinite Suburbia.

Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism.  He is senior advisor to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and executive editor of the widely read website www.newgeography.com. A regular contributor to City Journal, the Daily Beast, and Real Clear Politics, he also writes a weekly column for Digital First Media, which owns numerous daily newspapers in the greater Los Angeles region.

Kotkin is the author of seven previously published books, including The New Class Conflict, which describes the changing dynamics of class in America. His other books include The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, which explores how the nation will evolve in the next four decades. The City: A Global History and Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Are Reshaping the Global Economy, were also published in numerous languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, and Arabic.

Kotkin has published reports on topics ranging from the future of class in global cities to the places with the best opportunities for minorities. Over the past decade, he has completed studies focusing on several major cities, including a worldwide study for the U.K.-based Legatum Institute on the future of London, Mumbai, and Mexico City. He has also done studies of New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Houston, San Bernardino, and St. Louis, among others, in addition to working in smaller communities, including a report with Praxis Strategy Group on the rise of the Great Plains for Texas Tech University.