Welcome to my site!
Thanks for landing on this homepage, where you can launch into various aspects of my work. Below is a selection of some longer pieces I have written on a range of topics, including what I describe in the video here. None will consume more than a few minutes!
On the Blog and related Newsfeed, you’ll find the latest of my observations, many of them quite short. For many years at Forbes, I focused on Asian matters. Now I am often looking at issues closer to home, including land-use and preservation.
Please post any reactions or responses you have, and feel free to link in any postings of your own.
For my personal and professional background, please visit the Bio page.
It is my pleasure to have you as a reader.
–Tim Ferguson
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Featured Articles
Echoes of the ’70s in a Changed Sag Harbor
TIM W. FERGUSON – BLOG
As the village of Sag Harbor, N.Y., sought fitfully in the 1970s to renew itself, two young men from west of the Shinnecock Canal–a symbolic divide in the Hamptons real-estate game, which is mostly to the east–came to play notable roles.
When YIMBY Comes to a Southampton Hamlet
TIM W. FERGUSON – BLOG
Providing “affordable housing” in the midst of a price surge on the East End of Long Island, N.Y., is challenging enough—but the additional political wrinkles that come with each specific project were on display this month at a community-board meeting in the North Sea hamlet of Southampton town.
Our Hamptons Podcast – Interview
TIM W. FERGUSON – OUR HAMPTONS PODCAST
I discuss all things Hamptons with Esperanza and Irwin from the Our Hamptons podcast.
Last Shot at New Golf in Greater Hamptons
TIM W. FERGUSON – BLOG
When an 18-hole golf club—private and exclusive—opens in the next couple of years at the controversial Lewis Road luxury development in East Quogue, it will mark the latest and probably the last of 135 years of links building on and around the South Fork of Long Island.
Red Alert for Public Pensions
DISCOURSE MAGAZINE
The problem of pension shortfalls can be just as bad in red states as it is in blue ones.
Battle Lines Over Single-Family Zoning
DISCOURSE MAGAZINE
On both the libertarian right and the progressive left, the cause of ‘affordable housing’ is dividing political camps when it comes to legislation like California’s SB9.
The Left’s Long March Against Coors
DISCOURSE MAGAZINE
‘Brewing a Boycott’ describes 30 years of shunning with a flat result.
Moneyball 101: Reloading and Releaguing College Football
TIM W. FERGUSON – BLOG
“College football” is not only more like a professional game at its higher levels these days, but it is also as much of a business story as a sports one. At the moment, the phenomenon of NIL (name-image-likeness) payments to the athletes is focusing attention on Texas Tech University.
Why the Hamptons Has No Bike Path Like This
TIM W. FERGUSON – BLOG
Go to many affluent communities in North America and you notice some kind of safe cycling path. Not on the South Fork of Long Island.
New York’s Medicaid Dysfunction
DISCOURSE MAGAZINE
There’s no doubt that the United States faces an aging population, one that will be difficult and expensive to look after.
It’s a Dog’s Life — You Wish
MILKEN INSTITUTE REVIEW
The 1970s were infamously the time in which the U.S. middle class began its long decline. But while their version of the American Dream has been going to the dogs since, the fate of pet canines in many of those same homes has vastly improved.
Current Research
See the Hamptons Land tab below for scores of postings on this topic over the last 6 years.
The Shaping of the Modern Hamptons
From 1967, when a legislative ally of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller successfully carried a bill to extend the Sunrise Highway through the undisturbed farm-woodlands belt of the Hamptons to Amagansett, to 1999, when the Community Preservation Fund became law to preserve open space on Long Island’s East End through a surtax on property sales, a political and policy revolution reset the priorities of one of America’s choicest locales. This is a story of what wasn’t built–including that highway–as well as what was.
