🏠 Today #Rutgers researchers presented at the State House in Trenton discussing their recent and ongoing research into affordable housing and the corporate acquisition of property in #NJ. @stuartshapiroblou.bsky.social @bloustein.rutgers.edu @ericseymour.bsky.social @willbpayne.bsky.social
There’s a lot more, including how some of these overwhelmingly young male influencers use imagery of luxury cars and parties alongside trolling about how they love evicting tenants and charging monthly rent for ceiling fans etc. All publicity (perhaps even this paper 🙃) is good if new clients sign…
Map of HUD Metro Areas with Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR) Status
Finally, this map, showing Small-Area Fair Market Rent implementation
progress by HUD, shows that the spatial arbitrage loophole Section 8 investors targeted (rents set by metro area, higher than local asking, see work of @evarosen.bsky.social etc.) has already been closed in these markets
Map of the United States showing turnkey rental markets suggested by ChatGPT and Google Gemini sized by total Housing Choice Vouchers
This map shows the results of me taking the advice of one of these finfluencers and repeatedly prompting ChatGPT & Gemini to suggest turnkey low-cost housing markets (investment message boards like BiggerPockets likely in training data), with most markets in the Rust Belt & Deep South
Image from “Section 8 Training” website home page talking about how this is a method to “build passive income” with “government guaranteed rent”
A few images; first, this page shows the kind of promotional strategy influencers use to sell training courses & coaching. Almost every post mentions that rents are government-guaranteed (true besides the tenant contribution), and encourages inexperienced investors to participate
I have a new open access article in Geoforum, looking at how abrasive online “finfluencers” promise riches through buying cheap properties to rent to Housing Choice Voucher (“Section 8”) holders, using outdated spatial arbitrage strategies and AI automation: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Kind of sad to have started going to AAG after the legendary Tampa meeting, apparently attendance was way down but people who went said it was great
Also Oakland is definitely west of the (Tampa) Bay Area
Really excited to share my latest paper in @ijurresearch.bsky.social on mapping (a more expansive understanding of) absentee housing ownership in Atlanta! 🗺️🏘️📌 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Our new paper audits ChatGPT’s place-based judgements using 20 million pairwise comparisons. We find systematic geographic biases in how places are described and evaluated.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... (authors: Francisco W. Kerche, Matthew Zook, Mark Graham)
Prefuse 73 was maybe the first concert I got to cover “on assignment” for my college newspaper’s art section, if I remember right it was at the Avalon in 2005 and there were two live drummers… I’m pretty sure my article was in English though
Guided by Voices?
Has to be 2010 for me; I don’t know if it’s just that the electro pop bangers of that year were all so similar, but it just works so well and has some great little puns and grace notes in there… www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLA7...
Counter Culture Hologram beans that were roasted in August using a relative’s very good grinder, but a basket filter on a V60 pourover… a real coffee nerd rollercoaster!
Desert Island for me, other songs have wittier lyrics, but that hook is just 💯
New article with @lfalvarezleon.bsky.social on the different geographies created by digital capitalism, urbanization, and global production networks
The attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney today was a vile act of antisemitic terror. I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers. May the memories of all those killed be a blessing. While we are still waiting for all the facts to emerge, what we already know is devastating. At least 11 dead, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who held deep ties to Crown Heights. At least 29 injured. Another Jewish community plunged into mourning and loss, a holiday of light so painfully reduced to a day of darkness. This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world. Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside. What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too. On Bondi Beach today, as men with long guns targeted innocents, another man ran towards the gunfire and disarmed a shooter. Tonight, as Jewish New Yorkers light menorahs and usher in a first night of Hanukkah clouded by grief, let us look to his example and confront hatred with the urgency and action it demands. When I am Mayor, I will work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe—on our streets, our subways, at shul, in every moment of every day. Let this be a purpose shared by every New Yorker, and let us banish this horrific violence to the past.
Yeah for me it’s this or “On the Beach” 🏖️
The latest @njpolicylab.bsky.social report written by professors @ericseymour.bsky.social & @willbpayne.bsky.social looks at corporate ownership of 1–4-unit residential properties in #NJ. Between 2012 and 2022 ownership more than doubled. policylab.rutgers.edu/publication/...
Between 2012 and 2022, corporate ownership of 1–4-unit residential properties more than doubled in #NJ, according to this latest report from NJSPL and authored by #Rutgers researchers @ericseymour.bsky.social & @willbpayne.bsky.social:
policylab.rutgers.edu/publication/...
Similar to its precursor (smart cities), the real money in these speculative projects lies not in any eventual product but in the ecosystem of summits, workshops, and gatherings that circulate the idea and monetize the fiction itself under the pretense of design or planning.
The land and waterhemispheres. Equal-area projection. Map from wikipedia.
OK, so I just got really obsessed with a very arcane question. There are 'land' and 'water' hemispheres that maximize the amount of each (below). But can you divide the earth into two hemispheres that are each 29% land, 71% water, just like the earth as a whole? The LLMs said no… but I persisted.
Out in spring from @bentarnoff.com & I www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...
Tírame magnolias
AAG 2026 Call for Papers/Panelists: Urban Politics from Bidenomics to MAGA Urbanism Sponsored by the Urban Geography Specialty Group With the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, there is broad agreement that U.S. political culture is at a crisis point (Bouie 2025; Viala-Gaudefroy 2025). Since January 2025, the Trump Administration, an unusual assemblage of impresarios, hustlers, influencers, and hard-core ideologues, has deployed a chaotic program to remake American government and society in the image of authoritarian nationalism across the realms of foreign policy, immigration, trade, social policy, media, and energy (Townley 2025). In short, key figures in the administration have called for “repealing the 20th century,” and more proximately, key policy legacies of the Obama and Biden administrations (Davies 2025). Most recently, the administration has focused its attention on “crime” in “blue” cities and states, sending ICE agents and National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Portland in a show of force against its political enemies (Ward and Fertig 2025; Wong 2025). While most commentary on the Trump administration focuses on the transformation of the federal government, the changes underway are also profoundly urban (Wyly 2025). This session will explore the urban dimensions of the Biden-Trump transition across a range of domains. We invite paper abstracts and panelists discussing any of the following topics and beyond:
- Urban policy under the Biden and Trump administrations - Changing city, state, and federal interactions (conflict, cooperation, etc.) - Implications of legislative changes (IIJA, IRA, BBB, etc.) for cities - Specific sectoral dimensions (energy, housing, climate, social policy, etc.) - Urban voting patterns, gerrymandering, and partisanship - Urban militarization, policing, political violence, and spectacle - “Sanctuary cities,” immigration, and xenophobia - Interrelated housing, housing affordability, and homeowners' insurance crises - Urbanism, suburbanization, and transportation investment - Nativism, racism, natalism, and cities - Energy, petronationalism, and urban climate response - Urban discourses across legacy media, social media, and administration figures - Tech, venture capital, AI, and cities - Structural and conjunctural dimensions of each administration in the longue duree We anticipate at least one paper session and one more open-ended panel session based on this theme, depending on interest. Please submit paper abstracts or expressions of interest in panel participation (including topics of interest) to John Stehlin (jgstehli@uncg.edu) and Alan Wiig (alanwiig@ufl.edu) by 6:00 PM EDT (GMT -5:00) on Friday, October 24.
AAG 2026 Call for Papers/Panelists: "Urban Politics from Bidenomics to MAGA Urbanism" organized by myself and @alanwiig.bsky.social. Please send abstracts and/or expressions of panel interest to us by October 24, and share widely!
It’s your lucky day! We have identified your profile as a winner, but time is running out to claim your reward. Just send us 250 words within the next three days so we can process your claim. Act now! #AAG2026
Did you take Hoberman’s Cold War cinema class? So good
The Broadway show was very fun too
Along with Will Payne and Jovan Lewis, I'm organizing an AAG session on the economic geography of scams for the 2026 conference in San Francisco. Please share widely! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Hong Kong Restaurant 4eva
