Christopher Swope

Recent Articles

• Road to Katrinaville
• Mar 31, 2009
• The idea of the Katrina cottage was always bigger than the house itself. It started with New Urbanist architects, who began drawing pictures of colorful...

• Cottage Industry
• Mar 31, 2009
• A short walk from the quaint main street in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, architect Bruce Tolar is assembling a living museum of the Katrina-cottage movement. On...

• Philly Aglow
• Mar 1, 2009
• The head of Philadelphia's business improvement district set out to bring European-style lighting to Philly's arts district,

• Lofty Goals
• Feb 28, 2009
• Suddenly, everyone is talking about "green jobs." Task forces in Connecticut, Minnesota and New Mexico, among other states, are looking at how to attract, create...

• One Crowded Capital
• Dec 31, 2008
• Nobody knows for sure how many people will descend on Washington, D.C., this month to witness Barack Obama's presidential inauguration. Mayor Adrian Fenty has...

• Flakes of Danger
• Nov 30, 2008
• As winter sets in, mayors in northern climes may want to reflect on something that David Axelrod, one of the masterminds of Barack Obama's presidential...

• Locked Up
• Aug 31, 2008
• On a ranch outside Cranfield, Mississippi, workers for the state's largest oil and gas operator are shooting a dense liquid 10,300 feet into the earth. The...

• Revolution in the Stacks
• May 31, 2008
• Shalique Edmond has come to the Loft at Charlotte's children's library, as he does nearly every Saturday, to record a hip-hop song. In the library's...
• 1 Comments

• The Man Who Owns Flint
• Dec 31, 2007
• On a cold, gray day in Flint, Michigan, Dan Kildee is walking down Stone Street. Like a lot of residential blocks in Flint, it looks...
• 1 Comments

• Parks for Sale
• Dec 1, 2007
• Want to buy a city park? Detroit is looking at putting 92 of its parks up for sale. Most of them are tiny "pocket parks" in de-populating neighborhoods.

• Local Warming
• Nov 30, 2007
• It's a blue-sky morning in Seattle, which means that Ron Sims can see the Cascades all the way from his downtown office. The mountain range...

• Local Warming
• Nov 30, 2007
• It's a blue-sky morning in Seattle, which means that Ron Sims can see the Cascades all the way from his downtown office. The mountain range...

• Cool Pragmatist
• Nov 1, 2007
• In his first inaugural speech, Bill White urged Houston to "embrace strangers." At the time, the new mayor didn't know just how much his call for inclusiveness, a big theme in his 2003 campaign, would be put to the test. Less than two years later, Hurricane Katrina would ravage Louisiana and Mississippi, and more than 100,000 strangers--neighbors, White likes to say--showed up on Houston's doorstep. Mayor White, and his city, gave them a bear hug.

• Shrink Rap
• Nov 1, 2007
• On a sunny afternoon in Pittsburgh several weeks ago, a few dozen civic leaders from declining industrial cities met on the 31st floor of a downtown skyscraper.