A common question I hear, particularly from middle class Black residents in the Chicago area who grow frustrated with the condition of their communities, is, "why can't we have the amenities that other neighborhoods have?"  read more »

Regardless of your politics, you have to agree that Donald Trump remembered the “forgotten man” and woman. Yet that particular class of American still seems forgotten, frankly – or deliberately overlooked. And that doesn’t bode well for Flyover Country no matter what happened in the election.  read more »

The proponents of currently fashionable planning doctrines favouring density maintain, among other factors, that high-density planning is more environmentally sustainable. Policies based on these doctrines are being applied in Australian capital cities--- Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and to some extent Darwin and Hobart.

The assumption that high-density is environmentally superior seems to be based on intuition as no proof is provided to support this claim. Rather, considerable evidence is emerging that this is not the case.  read more »

Given the likely defeat of President Donald Trump, a functionally headless Republican Party is destined for a period of reflection. Trump himself, for all his rudeness and often unnecessary, divisive rhetoric, has transformed the Republican Party from being a bastion of the establishment to a voice for America’s working and middle class.  read more »

Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang Province in China. Hangzhou’s historic core is located approximately 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Shanghai and approximately 1,100 kilometers (675 miles) from Beijing .It is the largest municipality in Zhejiang, having passed Wenzhou within the last decade.  read more »

Progressive ideologues often like to evoke the idea that they speak “truth to power,” but this year it’s their leaders who are consolidating their clout.  read more »

Most of the world’s population is already living without the products and fuels from petroleum, while the healthier and wealthier countries are focusing efforts to reduce their emissions from the use of fossil fuels  read more »

Influential political analyst Ron Brownstein thinks American politics is all about answering this question: “How long can Paducah tell Seattle what to do?”  read more »

“We shall never deal with the complex problems of large units and differentiated groups unless at the same time we rebuild and revitalize the small unit. We must begin at the beginning; it is here where all life, even in big communities and organizations, starts.”
— Lewis Mumford  read more »

If you didn’t have time to watch my transit presentation from Milwaukee, I distilled a few of the themes into my October column for Governing magazine. Here’s an excerpt:  read more »