How FinTech is Going Green

Everyone loves touting their green credentials these days. Even oil companies make commercials detailing how clean their products are. But there’s still a gap between talking green and going green. The plastics industry lied about recycling, while even venerable organizations…

How Smart Cities Can Solve Real Problems

Writing in City Observatory, Joe Cortwright recently raised a good point regarding smart cities: so far, their solutions are neither very smart nor very useful. “Color us skeptical:  It’s hard to see how we’ll make better decisions with even bigger…

Tearing down ‘New Hong Kong’ ideas

As China cracked down progressively more on Hong Kong this summer, arresting more pro-democracy protestors and clamping down on the city’s autonomy, a number of commentators from the intersection of urbanism, policy and tech proposed establishing “New Hong Kong” or…

New article: remaking cities after Covid

My article “How to Retrofit Your Neighborhood to Save Urban Civilization” was published at The American Conservative on June 26. It’s about how American cities and towns can redevelop around walking, biking and “15 minute neighborhoods” that are more resilient…