Christopher Goodmans's blog

One of the biggest gripes about local government research, broadly, is that geography is largely not considered.

In July of 2025, I took over as (or became the first, depending on the accounting) MPA director at NIU.

Zotero is free and open source reference management software.

I have been generating this figure, more or less every month, for six years.

I was recently invited on WAMU’s 1A, a nationally syndicated radio talk show about current issues, to discuss preemption and what it means for local democracy.

A couple of updates to my Uses page.

I have a problem.

A somewhat up-to-date listing of all the stuff I use to get things done.

The most recent version of Obsidian mobile (11.1.0), currently only available to Catalyst supporters, includes the beginning of a long planned mobile revamp with new widgets and shortcuts support.

Some new evidence from South Africa on the effect of local governemnt amagamations (consolidations) on scale effects (operating spending) in Urban Studies.

It’s ineresting to see that population decline does not necessarily mean financial distress for local governments (in New South Wales).

This website was previously compiled using Hugo.

It is always nice to see a piece on the consequences of local government fragmentation—particularly in ways that we know exist but have not been extensively studied.

I use Obsidian as my main note taking app (among many other things it does for me).

Academia is a confusing place, especially for those who do not work there.

Academics are content creators.

I bought a Logitech Litra Glow key light for my home office during Amazon’s summer sale.

Whenever I talk with public affairs faculty about student enrollment, I always hear some version of the same question: “Where are all of our students?”

Below is my list of the six best or most interesting articles appearing in print last year.

LSE US Centre Blog The local government service delivery environment in the United States is complex.