Christopher Goodman’s blog

Finding orphans in Obsidian

I use Obsidian as my main notetaking app (among many other things it does for me). I try to implement Andy Matuschak’s ‘Evergreen Notes’ method when working through a particular concept in the literature. Often, this means linking notes together that haven’t been created yet. This post outlines a method of finding such orphaned links, so I can fill them in.

Christopher B. Goodman

What do universities actually do?

With universities all over the United States under fire from the Trump administration, there appears to be mass confusion by non-academics about what universities do. This post is meant as a plain language explainer of the kinds of things that research-intensive universities do.

Christopher B. Goodman

Academics as Creators

For many academics, 40%+ of their time is spent on activities that can fall into the category of ‘creating’. With this in mind, what do academics need to be successful creators? How can departments better support them in this role?

Christopher B. Goodman

Key light shenanigans

I have a niche problem. I have a key light in my office that I want to control via a macOS shortcut rather than the light’s app. It turns out that’s easy but also not easy.

Christopher B. Goodman

Where are all of our students?

No, you’re not crazy for asking where all the students have gone.

Christopher B. Goodman

My Necessarily Flawed List of Best or Most Interesting Articles of 2023

My list of the best or most interesting articles appearing in issues dated 2023. They are mostly local government, but some others sneak in that are important to my work in some way.

Christopher B. Goodman

Special districts cover services over large areas, but there is still duplication with local government provision

My coauthor, Deborah Carroll, and I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a our recent publication in Public Administration Review on whether special districts are complements or substitutes for spcial districts. See below for the full text of the post as well as a link to the original.

Christopher B. Goodman, Deborah A. Carroll

Conservative states are more likely stop their cities from addressing affordable housing, but renters and federal action can help

My coauthor, Megan Hatch, and I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a our recent publication in Urban Studies on the factors associated with the preemption of local affordable housing laws. See below for the full text of the post as well as a link to the original.

Christopher B. Goodman

Overlapping local governments in DuPage County, IL

Local governments in United States generally overlap other local governments. It is so common that many people do not give it a second thought; however, such a situation presents an interesting data visualization problem. How do you demonstrate the complexity of local government borders–both horizontally (where do neighboring cities intersect?) and vertically (which governments overlap a particular city or parcel)? I demonstrate one method using DuPage County, IL as an example.

Christopher B. Goodman

Illinois Special Districts Per Capita, 2017

Christopher B. Goodman

Florida is dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, home of Disney World. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a recent controversy about the Reedy Creek Improvement District – something I have a somewhat unique perspective on as a scholar of local governments and, in particular, special districts. See below for the full text of the post as well as a link to the original.

Christopher B. Goodman

Horizontal v. Vertical Fragmentation

Christopher B. Goodman

Municipal Incorporation in the US, 1789 - 2020

I’ve been collecting data on the earliest date of municipal incorporation for every active municipality in the US. This project is beginning to bear fruit.

Christopher B. Goodman

The structure of US local governments is often a poor predictor of local economic growth

I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a recent publication in the Journal of Urban Affairs on the implications of local government structure on long-run economic growth in the US metropolitan areas. See below for the full text of the post as well as a link to the original.

Christopher B. Goodman

Academic Project Management Notion (Update)

About a year ago, I wrote a small post about how I use Notion as a project management tool. I didn’t really expect it to be as popular as it is, but I also didn’t expect myself to change too much about the process either. It was working. Fast forward one, sort of over, but not really pandemic later. Things have certainly changed, sort of. This post is meant to explain some of those changes and to provide a template for anyone who wants to give this a spin.

Christopher B. Goodman

Special Districts: America’s Shadow Governments

I recently had the pleasure of writing a short blog post for the UIC Government Finance Research Center’s blog. The piece is a bit of a short explainer on special districts in the United States and a few fiscal issues that arise. It’s by no means comprehensive but part of a broader focus I have on writing more popular or policy focused work on these relatively hidden local governments. Below is the intro (I don’t have full re-print rights) and a link to the original.

Christopher B. Goodman

Municipal Fragmentation in U.S. Metro Areas in 3 Maps

Over on Twitter, Dan Immergluck (GSU) asked about what municipal fragmentation in the U.S. at the metropolitan level looked like. I, an expert on local government…

Christopher B. Goodman

The Price of Residential Street Parking

Cities, broadly, manage a number of public assets with which they provide public services. Some of those services are somewhat passive in the sense that no active labor…

Christopher B. Goodman

Per Capita Independent Special Districts, 2017

Christopher B. Goodman

Academic Project Management using Notion

I’m horribly bad at project management. It’s not usually something that is specifically taught in graduate school even though it’s incredibly important to an academic’s professional life. There are many ways to go about this (low tech to super high tech), but the purpose of this post is to explain one tool that I have found incredibly useful and flexible. That tool is Notion (notion.so). Notion can do way more than I am going to explain (see Using Notion as Your Second Brain), but this is how I use it to keep track of writing projects throughout the process of development to publication.

Christopher B. Goodman

Per Capita General-Purpose Local Governments, 2017

Christopher B. Goodman

Per Capita Local Governments, 2017

Christopher B. Goodman

Speculating on the Impact of COVID-19 on Chicagoland Property Taxes

Over on Twitter, I worked through a how the current COVID-19 pandemic might influence property taxes in the Chicagoland region (see below for a link to that thread if you…

Christopher B. Goodman

How to Desaturate Figures for Publication using R

Many academic journals require figures in greyscale. This can be done relatively simply by printing to PDF as greyscale; however, this doesn’t give you a) a way to preview what the resulting figure will look like and b) much control over the process of desaturation. If you’re making figures in {R}, this process is almost as easy as the more simplistic print to PDF method.

Christopher B. Goodman

Total Local Governments, 2017

Christopher B. Goodman