Joe Cortright

Joe Cortright

Anti-Social Capital?

In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam popularized the term “social capital.” Putnam also developed a clever series of statistics for measuring social capital. He looked at survey data about interpersonal trust (can most people be trusted?) as well as…

How distinct is your city?

Every city has its own unique characteristics. We know that industrial and occupational specializations can be measured using standard economic tools like location quotients. But some of the more intangible characteristics of cities are harder to measure. We’re always on…

Lost in Place

Lost in Place: Why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty–not gentrification–is our biggest urban challenge. A close look at population change in our poorest urban neighborhoods over the past four decades shows that the concentration of poverty is growing…