Why subscribe?

Growth and Dreams is an occasional newsletter with stories, trends and ideas about growth in all its forms - past, present and future; rural, suburban and urban; economic, educational and architectural. We’ll consider questions, big and small, about how we got to here, and where we might be going. What is the future of the suburbs? How will higher education remain relevant? Is the gig economy a symptom or cause of rising inequality?

Posts come from me, Chuck McShane. I’m an economic researcher and a storyteller in North Carolina. You can read more about my journalism and research consulting work here.

About the title

All growth begins as a dream. A vision to see something where nothing yet exists. To replace fumbling with fluency. To make the unimaginable obvious.

But whose dreams become reality? And who even gets to dream in the first place? In this era of slowing mobility and and winner-take-all markets, these questions are increasingly urgent.

Framing economic growth in terms of dreams fulfilled, delayed or thwarted can breath humanity into what might seem dry statistics, revealing people behind the numbers.