• Who Are You Calling a Hick?
• BY: Otis White   |   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: Otis White   |   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: Otis White   |   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.

• A Team Grows in Brooklyn
• BY: Otis White   |   February 2004
• What's the worst calamity ever to befall New York's borough of Brooklyn? Easy answer: losing the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team to Los Angeles in 1957. But now there's a serious effort to bring a big- time sports franchise to the borough.

• Attention, Ken Lay
• BY: Otis White   |   January 2004
• This sounds like something Enron would have dreamed up. Cities across the country are being visited by financiers with a startling offer: Lease us your sewer systems, transit lines or civic centers, and we'll give you a pot of money.

• Stop That Infernal Quacking!
• BY: Otis White   |   December 2003
• If you don't live in a city where they have duck tours, this may be a little hard to grasp, but duck tours are a big hit with tourists.

• Thar She Blows!
• BY: Otis White   |   November 2003
• Some homeowners in Miami are getting the shocks of their lives: toilets that erupt with sewage shooting two feet in the air--with all the unpleasantness you might imagine.

• Secrets of A Turnaround
• BY: Otis White   |   October 2003
• Can you turn around a place whose name is synonymous with urban blight? Surprisingly, yes. Example: Camden, New Jersey, the played-out factory town across the river from Philadelphia.

• To Smell A Thief
• BY: Otis White   |   September 2003
• Somebody keeps stealing garbage cans in Dallas, and it's causing a stink. Reason: These aren't your usual Rubbermaid trash cans; they're official City of Dallas receptacles, 90-gallon cans with wheels known as roll carts that are designed to work with automated garbage trucks.

• Yes, We're Rich, But Please Don't Remind Us
• BY: Otis White   |   August 2003
• Which city of 100,000 or more population has the greatest concentration of million-dollar homes? Star-studded Los Angeles? Nope. Chicago and its famous Gold Coast? Nah. Swanky New York? Not even close.

• Dream Town Houses
• BY: Otis White   |   July 2003
• The New Urbanist dream goes something like this: People will give up their sprawling, inefficient suburban homes on half-acres of land and embrace the joys of compact living in places served by public transit and convenient walkways to schools, parks and stores.

• Five Feet Under
• BY: Otis White   |   June 2003
• Life is tough in city halls across the country, with tax revenues declining and expenses rising. And, as it turns out, death isn't much better. In Danville, Virginia, the city council recently was struggling with how to hold down costs at the city's cemeteries when one council member made an interesting suggestion: Why not bury people five feet deep rather than six feet?

• Change The Locks!
• BY: Otis White   |   May 2003
• Guess who once was given a key to the city of Detroit: Saddam Hussein. The Detroit News discovered recently that in 1980 the Iraqi president was awarded a ceremonial key by a pastor of Detroit's Chaldean Christian community.

• The Celebrity Shortage
• BY: Otis White   |   April 2003
• If your community doesn't already have enough worries, here's one: You may be up against a celebrity gap. This is a particular problem for charities, which use movie stars, pop singers, athletic heroes, former presidents and big-time authors to draw donors to their fund-raising events. Clearly this isn't a problem in places such as Los Angeles or New York.

• Birds of A Feather
• BY: Otis White   |   March 2003
• One of the handiest concepts for understanding how cities develop is the notion of "clustering," developed by Harvard business professor Michael Porter. Simple concept: It holds that, in some highly developed industries, leading practitioners need to be near one another, even when logic and high land costs might suggest that it's better to disperse.

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Comments

• Bike Lane Battles Heat Up
  
  "If you look at other streets with bike lanes - Valencia St is a good example - the shops..."
• Preservation Tax Credit and Local History in Danger
  
  "It sounds as if what you are commenting on is a conservation easement situation not rehabilitation..."
• Do Cities Need a Chief Resilience Officer?
  
  "Hopefully in the future the Rockefeller Foundation will include counties as well. Often..."
• Commuter Rail Ridership Declining Despite Increase in Lines
  
  "In the penultimate paragraph, I don't believe it's accurate that Metro North's ridership..."