Demographia

WENDELL COX
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Wendell Cox is a leading proponent of adopting land use and transport policies based on their effectiveness in improving the standard of living and alleviating poverty. He is principal of Demographia (Wendell Cox Consultancy) in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He specializes in urban policy, transport and demographics and is author of Demographia World Urban Areas and co-author of Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. He is also author of Toward More Prosperous Cities, a framing essay on urban areas, urban planning, urban transport and sustainability.

He has consulted for public authorities and private companies in the United States, Canada, Europe,Asia, Australia and New Zealand and for public policy organizations and lectured widely. He has served as visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (a national university) in Paris, in transport and demographics.

Wendell Cox is contributing editor of new.geography.com, for which he writes a regular column. This includes "The Evolving Urban Form" series, which analyzes demographic trends in world urban areas.

Demographia sponsors three internet websites:

1. Demographia: (www.demographia.com) is principally involved in urban public policy and demographic analysis. This site contains articles describing the Demographia perspective on urban policy as well as detailed demographic data, some of which is unavailable elsewhere. The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey provides a housing affordability index and ranking for all major markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as Hong Kong Demographia World Urban Areas provides developed land area, population and density estimates for all (more than 850) identified urban areas with more than 500,000 population in the world and is the only such listing available.

2. Urban Tours by Rental Car (www.rentalcartours.net) contains to travelogues of international urban areas from the Demographia perspective. As of early 2006, this site contained more than 70 travelogues on urban areas in Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

2. The Public Purpose (www.publicpurpose.com) contains transport and public policy information and analysis. The Public Purpose was twice selected by The National Journal as one of the Internet's best transport sites.

Mr. Cox served three years as the Director of Public Policy of the American Legislative Exchange Council, where he oversaw the development of state model legislation and policy reports. He drafted the 1988 Colorado legislation that required 20 percent of the Denver transit system to be competitively tendered, the only mandatory competitive tendering law in the United States (mandatory competitive tendering laws and regulations have been enacted in Europe, Australia, South Aftica and New Zealand). He was also a participant in drafting the competitive pricing procedures by which New Zealand converted its public transport system to competition in 1991. Most recently he was commissioned by the congressional Millennial Housing Commission to prepare a policy report Smart Growth and Housing Affordability. He lectures widely, writes numerous commentary articles (op-eds) and is frequently interviewed by the international, national and local media.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC). LACTC was the top public policy authority on public transport and highways in the nation's largest county. Out of 11 LACTC members, Mr. Cox was the only non-elected official. While at LACTC he authored the tax amendment that provided the initial funding for building light rail ("Blue" Line) and the subway ("Red" Line). He was elected chairman of the American Public Transit Association Planning and Policy Committee (comprised of transit planning department officials) and the American Public Transit Association Governing Boards Committee (comprise of transit board members). He was also the principal LACTC author of the Transit Service and Coordination Program, which led to the withdrawal from the regional transit agency (the Southern California Rapid Transit District) of the Foothill Transit District (San Gabriel Valley) and the express bus services within the city of Los Angeles. Both of these systems now operate service considerably less expensively than the regional transit authority and all services are competitively tendered (competitively contracted).

He left LACTC in 1985 to begin consulting, largely on the isse of competition in urban transport, especially competitive contracting. He had become convinced that the principal financial problem in public transport was not funding, but was rather insufficient cost control. He became one of the world's leading experts on the subject. As a As it became obvious that urban rail programs were not achieving their promised traffic reduction impact, and were exceedingly expensive compared to alternatives, Mr. Cox became committed to supporting the most effective urban transport alternatives. As a result, he has become an advocate for more effective strategies in urban transport. In 1999, Wendell Cox was appointed to the Amtrak Reform Council by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, to fill the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (who had resigned) and was appointed to be chairman of the Financial Analysis Committee.

Wendell Cox was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. He was Oregon state mile run and cross country champion and set the national United States junior class (school year 11) record in the two-mile run. He attended the University of Southern California and earned a bachelor's degreee in Government from California State University Los Angeles and a Master of Business Administration from Pepperdine University.

Demographia: Affiliated with The Public Purpose, Twice A National Journal Top Internet Site

Demographia is "pro-choice" with respect to urban development.
People should have the freedom to live and work where and how they like.