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The Case for American Optimism
Now that Trump has been edged out of office, Joe Biden may emerge as the harbinger of a brighter, better blue future or as a version of Konstantin Chernenko, the aged timeserver who ran the Soviet...
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The Threat to Regional Unity
Happy New Year, everybody.My latest column in Governing magazine is about another possible piece of fallout from the coronavirus, namely the undermining of the regional unity and solidarity that...
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A New Localism Can Heal, Advance Flyover Country
The mess in Washington underscores the harsh reality that our national fissures aren't going to be healed any time soon – if ever. Among other things, that means America will have to progress on the...
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Biden Should Help Clean Up the Developing World's Exotic Mining Tragedy
Reducing America’s emissions (if that’s your thing) is a major goal of President Elect Biden’s platform, but it should not be implemented by “leaking” environmental degradation and human atrocities to...
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Will 2021 Bring Positive Change for Working-Class People?
During 2020, Working-Class Perspectives touched on many COVID-related topics and showed how working-class people around the world were being disproportionately affected for a variety of reasons....
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2020 Metro Virus Fatality Rates & Observations
This article provides data on COVID-19 fatality rates for the 53 US major metropolitan areas, from the first infection to December 31, 2020.Because so many US major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000...
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The Tinsleys
There’s a model pioneer era farm next to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana that fascinates me. The farm buildings were originally constructed in the town of Willow Creek forty miles away...
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Progressives Must Stop Celebrating Urban Flight
As the nation enters 2021 with hopes of healing divisions, Vox published a story with the drop headline, “Young families and wealthy people are decamping for the suburbs — which might make cities more...
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Time to Deliver: How Biden Should Respond to the Insurrection
“The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches – with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone – was once at the core of the American Dream.” –Robert Reich, economist and...
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Can We Save the Planet, Live Comfortably, and Have Children Too?
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about what Zillow calls “the great re-shuffling,” as more people head out of major metropolitan areas to work, often remotely, in less dense, even rural areas. The...
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Quality Of Life, Or Quantity Of Lives?
Anyone who's been in the urbanism game as long as I have (or longer) is probably familiar with the annual Places Rated Almanac, the annual metro area ranking reference produced by David Savageau. First...
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‘Call Your Mother’ Sitcom Is Coastally Out of Step
Call Your Mother is lame enough as it is. But a major extra shortcoming of ABC’s latest sitcom, which recently debuted with a pilot episode, is that one of its foundations is a banal juxtaposition of...
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The $25 Billion Theft
The states siphoned off 21 percent of gasoline taxes and other highway user fees to pay for mass transit and other non-highway activities in 2019, according to table SDF of the 2019 Highway Statistics,...
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Making America California
As the Biden administration settles in and begins to formulate its agenda, progressive pundits, politicians, and activists point to California as a role model for national policy. If the administration...
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Woke Politics Are a Disaster for Minorities
Bill Clinton may have been lionized as the “first black President,” and Barack Obama actually was half African, but no politician in American history owes more to African-American leadership and voters...
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Now That the Suburbs Are No Longer Evil, When Will They Get More Functional?
Nothing like an Urban Riot (and a Pandemic) to cause renewed flight to the suburbs. This recalls when I was starting out in 1968, shortly after the riots in Detroit that caused one of the strongest...
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If Biden Can't Build a Better Economy, America is In Trouble
Donald Trump’s finally gone, but if Joe Biden wants his return to normalcy to be any more successful than his predecessor’s appeal to greatness, he’ll need to take on the real issues dragging red and...
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Work Trips in the CSAs with the Largest CBDs
This article describes the reduction in work visits, by counties within the six combined statistical areas (CSAs), also called commuting zones, that include the nation’s six largest downtown areas...
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New York Again Seeks a Handle Up
One aspect of New York City’s clean-up in the 1990s was the closing of many dingy Off-Track Betting parlors. Some tidier operations lived on for a few years but ultimately Gotham said good riddance to...
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Biden's Climate Plans are Energizing National Secuity Problems
For the first time in 70 years, through the fracking boom in recent years, the U.S. attained energy independence status meaning we were no longer held hostage to unstable Petro-powers and the vagaries...
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