Described by the New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer,” Joel Kotkin is an internationally recognised authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us, was published in 2016.
Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director of the Houston-based Centre for Opportunity Urbanism. He is Executive Editor of the widely read website New Geography and writes the weekly New Geographer column for Forbes.com. He serves on the editorial board of the Orange County Register and writes a weekly column for that paper, and is a regular contributor to the Daily Beast and Real Clear Politics.
He is the author of seven previously published books, including the widely praised The New Class Conflict, which describes the changing dynamics of class in America.
Over the past decade, Kotkin has completed studies focusing on several major cities, including a worldwide study focusing on the future of London, Mumbai and Mexico City, and studies of New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Houston, San Bernardino and St. Louis, among others. In 2010 he completed an international study on “the new world order” for the Legatum Institute in London, UK that traced trans-national ethnic networks, particularly in East Asia.
Currently Kotkin is coordinating major studies on Texas urbanism, the future of localism and the re-industrialisation of the American heartland for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. As director of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman, he was the lead author of a major study on housing, and is currently involved in a project about the future of Orange County, CA.
