Christopher Swope

Recent Articles

• Off-Center
• Mar 1, 2007
• You can hardly blame Mayor Tom Menino for hating the building he works in. Boston's city hall is an intimidating concrete battleship from the 1960s. Nobody loves it except for a few architecture snobs, who value it as an icon of a style fittingly known as "Brutalism."

• Warming Up in the Bullpen
• Feb 22, 2007
• For all the innovations that are spinning out of NYC under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the idea that almost no other mayors are stealing is the ...

• Disasters Unlimited
• Feb 1, 2007
• Insurance companies see a potential Katrina almost everywhere they look. And they want homeowners to pay in advance.

• Guerilla Video, Gone Too Far
• Jan 26, 2007
• Forget all those legislative issues to watch we told you about. The big issue in legislatures this year is going to be YouTube, or more ...

• See Ya Later, Gas Tax
• Jan 24, 2007
• So President Bush now wants to cut gasoline use by 20 percent. What's not to love about that? Here's one thing, if you're in the state ...
• 6 Comments

• More Wiki Wackiness
• Jan 23, 2007
• Oh Wikipedia, when will you grow up? The latest victim of wiki-vandalism is Philly Mayor John Street. A couple of days ago, it seems, Hizzoner's ...
• 14 Comments

• Your Legislative Fantasies, Realized
• Jan 22, 2007
• There's fantasy baseball, fantasy football and fantasy basketball. And if you scrape around the internet a bit, you'll find that there's even fantasy lacrosse, fantasy ...
• 4 Comments

• Googlicious
• Jan 17, 2007
• It wasn't so long ago -- what, 2005? -- when Google would blow my mind, week after week, with new web toys. Just when I'd get ...
• 4 Comments

• Mayor on Blogging: The Smartest Thing I've Ever Done
• Jan 12, 2007
• I've been trading e-mails with Bill Gentes, the "Blogging Mayor of Round Lake" in Illinois. Hizzoner has been keeping a blog for about ...
• 4 Comments

• Wither the City Manager?
• Jan 11, 2007
• I'm sure all the city manager types among you have seen this NYT story by now. If you haven't, get reading. According to the Times, ...
• 6 Comments

• Gentrification Fight Takes to YouTube
• Jan 11, 2007
• This Old House it's not. But this video and others on YouTube, posted by preservation activists in Houston, does represent something of a breakthrough. The ...

• For Sale: Jonathan Walters' Driveway
• Jan 5, 2007
• After reading my article on how state and local governments are selling off their toll roads, parking garages and other assets, Governing Correspondent Jonathan Walters ...

• Chipping in for Silicon Valley
• Jan 1, 2007
• San Jose capitalizes its own venture fund

• Unloading Assets
• Dec 31, 2006
• Richard M. Daley might say, with a wink and a nod, that he's got a bridge he'd like to sell you. Except that Daley has...

• Bradley Abelow
• Dec 31, 2006
• Bradley Abelow is the treasurer of New Jersey. In September, he asked the investment bank UBS to scour state government for assets to consider selling...