Joel Kotkin

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.