Urban Notebook


  • We Buy, You Fly
  • BY:   |   July 2005
  • When American Airlines pulled 200 daily flights out of St. Louis's Lambert Field airport in 2003, it wrecked the airport's finances. As you might have guessed, airports are weighted down with fixed costs-- things they must pay for regardless of how many people they serve, such as runways, terminals and baggage systems.

  • Don't Forget Philanthropists
  • BY:   |   May 2005
  • Corporate leadership of cities is at an all-time low. Business consolidations swallowed many of the local banks and newspapers that once called the shots in cities, and globalization has broadened the horizons of surviving companies. But as CEOs step back, others are stepping forward, including philanthropists.

  • Creatures of the State
  • BY:   |   April 2005
  • Mayor Bill White's efforts to speed traffic on Houston's freeways spawned the "Safe Clear" program, under which any car stalled on a city highway would immediately be towed away, even if it were in an emergency lane and the driver could fix the problem. Cost of the tows: $75. The public response was overwhelmingly negative. After a few weeks, White softened the program, directing that people with flat tires would be towed for free.

  • Developers (Heart) NY
  • BY:   |   March 2005
  • In the future, we'll study different cities for how they managed the great urban turnaround at the end of the 20th century. We'll go to Philadelphia to learn how to revive a downtown and manage homelessness. We'll study Chicago for urban vision and street beautification.

  • Freeways (For a Fee)
  • BY:   |   February 2005
  • Mark this in your diary: The great American free ride is fast coming to an end. In the years ahead, the solution to traffic congestion will be toll roads. From San Francisco to Houston, Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, transportation officials have decided that the next great wave of highway construction will come with an explicit price--and sometimes not a cheap one.

  • Drive-By Neighbors
  • BY:   |   December 2004
  • The 18th-century historic district in Charleston, South Carolina, has become so popular that very wealthy people are buying homes there to live in for a few weeks a year. What's wrong with that? It makes the area more like a museum than a real neighborhood.

  • Artistic License?
  • BY:   |   November 2004
  • Public art is a great thing, not least because of its ability to communicate complex ideas through symbolism. That was on the minds of city officials in the San Francisco suburb of Livermore, California, when they completed a new public library a few years ago and commissioned a $40,000 mural near the entrance to portray the tree of knowledge, with small portraits in its branches of great artists, writers, scientists and other historic figures.

  • Flipping Land, Not Flapjacks
  • BY:   |   October 2004
  • How nutty is the housing market today? In Los Angeles, people with no background in real estate are buying empty lots, plunking down a house real quick and selling for big profits.

  • A Garden On Steroids
  • BY:   |   September 2004
  • Three things about Chicago's new downtown Millennium Park are well known: It's spectacular, way over budget (original estimate: $150 million, final cost: $475 million) and four years overdue.

  • Sip, Don't Gulp, Your Water
  • BY:   |   August 2004
  • It's a funny time to talk about this (it has been raining a lot in Texas lately), but Dallas is running out of water, and the problem is one of its own making.

  • Can't Buy Me Love
  • BY:   |   July 2004
  • Sometimes love can't be easily explained. Take the affection that skateboarders have for Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Plaza--better known as LOVE Park. This small park, just across from city hall and home of the bright-red sculpture with four letters--L-O-V-E--stacked in two rows, is the most popular site in all of urban skateboarding.

  • Game Over
  • BY:   |   June 2004
  • In some parts of the country, playing sports in the street is part of the urban culture, like stickball in New York. Generations of suburban kids have grown up, too, with a basketball hoop on the cul-de-sac and after-school games.

  • Who Are You Calling a Hick?
  • BY:   |   May 2004
  • Calvin Trillin, the New Yorker magazine writer, used to say that most cities not located on either coast suffered from "hickophobia," which was not the fear of hicks but the fear of being thought of as hicks. Imagine, then, the fears of Fargo, North Dakota.

  • Close, But Not Too Close
  • BY:   |   April 2004
  • Shopping malls have a complicated relationship with public transit. Mall managers want buses to bring in shoppers and workers but don't want them to pull up too close to the door. Why? Various reasons are given, most having to do with safety, but class almost certainly plays a role.

  • A Touch of Soho in the 'Burbs
  • BY:   |   March 2004
  • What's the big deal about living in a loft? The classic New York lofts of the 1970s, which were illegally converted factory spaces in a neighborhood called SoHo, were dingy, drafty and cheap. But sometime in the late 1980s, the idea of living in big undivided spaces with brick walls and exposed heating ducts overhead caught on.


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