Joel Kotkin
Presidential Fellow
Urban Futures at Chapman University
Profile | Twitter @joelkotkin
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 (Agate Press) in 2016 and co-edited, with MIT’s Alan Berger, the 2018 collection INFINITE SUBURBIA (Princeton University Press).
Mr. 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 (opportunityurbanism.org). He is Senior Advisor to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. He is Executive Editor of the widely read website www.newgeography.com. A regular contributor to the City Journal, 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 widely praised THE NEW CLASS CONFLICT (Telos Press), which describes the changing dynamics of class in America.
Other past books include THE NEXT HUNDRED MILLION: America in 2050 (Penguin), 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.
Mr. Kotkin has published reports on topics ranging from the future of class in global cities to the places with the best opportunities for minorities. His 2013 report, “Post-familialism: Humanity’s Future,” an examination of the world’s future demography, was published by the Civil Service College of Singapore and Chapman University and has been widely commented on not only in the United States, but in Israel, Brazil, Canada and other countries.
Over the past decade, Mr. Kotkin has completed studies focusing on several major cities, including a worldwide study for the UK-based Legatum Institute on the future of London, Mumbai and Mexico City, and in 2010 completed an international study on “the new world order,” also for Legatum, that traced trans-national ethnic networks, particularly in East Asia. 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.
Kotkin recently completed several studies including on Texas urbanism, the future of localism, the changing role of transit in America and most recently California’s lurch towards feudalism. He is co-author, with Michael Lind, on a report published in 2018 on the revival 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 recently, with Marshall Toplansky, published a strategic analysis for Orange County, CA.
