The Strange, Troubled History of Pedestrian Malls
A few of them have worked out well. Most of them have been failures. But the idea of building new ones has never died, and there are signs of still another incarnation.
Alan Ehrenhalt served for 19 years as executive editor of Governing Magazine, and is currently one of its contributing editors. He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and op-ed page, the Washington Post Book World, New Republic and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of four books: The United States of Ambition, The Lost City, Democracy in the Mirror, and The Great Inversion. He was also the creator and editor of the first four editions of Politics in America, a biennial reference book profiling all 535 members of Congress. Alan Ehrenhalt is a 1968 graduate of Brandeis University and holds an MS in journalism from Columbia. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard from 1977-1978; a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987-1988; a Regents’ Lecturer at UCLA in 2006; an adjunct faculty member at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, at the University of Richmond, from 2004 through 2008; and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland Graduate School of Public Policy in 2009. In 2000 he received the American Political Science Association’s McWilliams award for distinguished contributions to the field of political science by a journalist. He is married, has two daughters, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.
A few of them have worked out well. Most of them have been failures. But the idea of building new ones has never died, and there are signs of still another incarnation.
Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood is rich and mostly white, but the same jump in violent crime that many cities are seeing has alarmed its residents. Some of them think secession is the answer.
Most states set a mandatory retirement age for their judges, typically 70. Does that still make sense in this day and time? The wisdom and stability of longevity are worth something.
How much authority should governments have to protect people misbehaving in ways that are, in most cases, dangerous only to themselves?
Lawmakers in much of the country will be doing their work next year by remote control. That will make a tough job even tougher.
By defining the downtown Loop more than a century ago, elevated trains and tracks gave the city a vibrant economic and cultural center. It's a core element that other cities don't have.
Charlotte's majority-millennial city council has accomplished a few things, but mostly what its members have done is squabble with each other. Succeeding as a 'change agent' is harder than it might seem.
One state took a small step this week , but we're a long way from eliminating noncompetitive districts and partisan malfeasance.
It may depend on what millennials really want. But none of the ideas aimed at that generation would make more than a dent in America's acute housing shortage.
Efforts to merge municipalities make a lot of sense, particularly in this virus-plagued, cash-poor moment. But they usually don't succeed. Three struggling Illinois towns are about to try it anyway.
It means different things to different people. In the end, it doesn't really mean much at all. And there's very little that politicians or government can do to uphold or restore it.
Cities keep lurching between electing their governing bodies from districts and choosing them at large. The district approach is gaining, but its fragmentation doesn't promote a broad view of community needs.
THE FUTURE OF Community Design
For decades, we've embraced openness in everything from city planning to the way our homes are built and our schools and offices are arranged. But the age of openness may be winding down.
Over a half-century in office — and running for office — this man of paradox broke virtually every rule in the politico's rulebook. Californians loved him for it.
They've been trying for a long time to attract city dwellers by installing amenities that urbanites crave. COVID-19 fears are providing them with a new opportunity to get it right.
A scholar who's been studying the place for half a century thinks so, and it does seem to be ahead of other cities in some respects. But there also are some ways it's behind the curve.
White blue-collar families and their racial fears defined the urban landscape of 50 years ago, as Black Americans struggled through destabilizing change. The cities of today are very different places.
We used to look to Washington for leadership in times of national crisis. Those days are gone, and we're seeing a transfer of power. Which level of government will come out on top?
The factors that led to the revival of our city centers will still be there in the aftermath of the coronavirus shutdown: low crime, a craving for entertainment and the desire for physical proximity.
It may seem hard to believe that the time of a deadly pandemic might one day be remembered wistfully by those who lived through it. But something like that has happened before in American life.
With an eye on tourism and development, states keep trying to come up with evocative new taglines. Sometimes they stumble.
Tension between downtowns and neighborhoods isn’t going to go away.
By clustering in cities, even small ones, they have weakened their political impact.
With falling ridership and scrapped expansion projects, urban transit faces an uncertain future.
Well-run governments must have clear lines of leadership. Just ask Pueblo, Colo.
They take mixed-use development to an extreme with buildings that residents may never need to leave.
For the most part, it’s a bad idea for governments to copy private-sector trends. But there may be one exception.
There are plenty of theories about how they will reshape urban areas. But it’s anybody’s guess.
Behavioral economics is a powerful tool to encourage people to make certain decisions, but governments need to use it with caution.
There’s still plenty of coverage of governors and legislatures. But the void of newspaper reporters has been filled with partisan-slanted bloggers.
Politicians say they want citizens to be involved. But it can make things harder to achieve.
The ascent of cities is real, though things may not be as rosy as some suggest.
When it comes to transportation planning, Atlanta and Nashville are both at a crossroads.
Two states still allow split-verdicts to send people to prison. That may change soon. But maybe it shouldn't.
Instead of scrubbing spray-painted tags, many places are now encouraging murals and other colorful street art.
Some of today's scandals would have gone unseen a couple decades ago.
They are despised by drivers and many lawmakers.
Turns out, the answer isn’t either-or. Rather, it’s a question with 80 million answers.
States are hoping to bring their case over animal welfare and interstate commerce to the Supreme Court.
Can Alabama’s capital honor both civil rights and the Confederacy? It thinks so.
Their citizens' sense of well-being may tell a lot about whether a community is thriving.
Whether you're talking about Detroit or Youngstown, Ohio, so-called legacy cities have similar problems with no simple solution.
Legislatures regularly interfere with local affairs. The reasons, according to research, will surprise you.
They can have a big impact on economic fortunes and social cohesion, which explains the controversy that often surrounds them.
We first published in 1987, a year when states and cities seemed poised for innovation.
In 1977, the GOP faced an identity crisis. It eventually found a winning formula and returned to power.
There are no crystal balls, yet some judges expect planners and policymakers to predict the future anyway.
A lot of what fosters it is out of their control, but a little audacity goes a long way.
A lot of the hard-line GOP governors who won in 2010 have surprised their supporters with a shift toward pragmatism. What’s driving the change?
Some want to save the fiscally challenged city in New York by effectively abolishing it.
In the past, politicians have ignored the realities that exist in big cities. They seem to be doing it again.
Hip restaurants have helped revive cities. But is the boom fizzling out?
For centuries, commerce and fresh air went together. They’re starting to again.
A look back at their evolution may offer some idea of what lies ahead.
Cities and states have very different ideas for fixing decrepit urban highways.
They vow to rev up the local economy all the time, exposing their misunderstanding of cities and political office.
The stadiums that cities invest in often end up losing money. There’s another, more profitable option: music festivals.
It's making a comeback in public schools. But to really make voters more informed, the curriculum could use an overhaul.
Cities are increasingly viewing parking in a negative light and rethinking its place in metropolitan America.
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Cities love to boast that they're special. It's not always true, but it can be a useful myth.
There are lots of ideas out there. None of them are working very well.
There’s a common perception that the Establishment is disappearing. In fact, it died decades ago at all levels of government.
As states act more like independent sovereigns, Washington has itself to blame.
A gritty blue-collar town in Minnesota reflects the tensions in many places located between cities and suburbs.
Unlike a generation ago, today’s urban renaissance often displaces people and businesses.
In the ideological war over urban planning, anti-transit conservatives are gaining funding and allies.
In North Carolina, lawmakers don't want to embrace the state’s shift away from rural, small-town life. But their efforts may be futile.
Most public policy decisions are best described as transfers of wealth where somebody wins and somebody loses.
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Whether states are governed by a coalition of farmers and teachers or an alliance of corporate executives and insurance brokers matters.
When cities try to regulate them, they find themselves in a legal minefield.
Wealthier people often move to gentrifying neighborhoods for the mom-and-pop stores, but their presence is driving the shops away. Can cities save them?
They may have had their negatives, but unlike Congress today -- and to some degree, the states -- they got the job done.
After advising municipalities on how to construct roads for years, Charles Marohn now believes America needs to stop building new highways. Will his new way of thinking catch on?
In 1994, Seattle won praise from urbanist thinkers nationwide with its 20-year plan for population and economic growth.
Over the past few decades, it’s become easier to convict public officials for corruption but harder to know who’s really guilty of it.
Some worry the benefits of a better education don’t outweigh the new problems it brings.
Some say Democrats suffered big blows in November because they’ve become a party of urban elitists.
It’s hard to define, but it's dramatically changing the urban landscape and bringing a host of new challenges to local leaders.
The midterm elections marked the return of divided government, with more than a third of states in split-power situations.
Inspired by an idea that originated in 1970s Brazil, urban planners in America are increasingly thinking small scale to solve big problems.
After a fight led by liquor stores, the state will keep decisions about whether or not to sell alcohol at the county level.
The longtime mayor of Boston was an unconventional politician, and that's why he was one of the most successful urban leaders of his generation.
More than 80 years after Prohibition ended at the national level, Arkansas voters will decide in November whether to keep their state dry.
As state legislatures' structures and salaries have changed, so have the type of people the political office attracts.
As gay Americans gained more acceptance and integrated themselves throughout cities over the past decade, a sociologist argues they've also lost some of their community and history.
America's fourth-largest city has never had a zoning code.
As suburban poverty rises, cities aren’t as enthusiastic about annexing the suburbs anymore.
Nearly every state has faced lawsuits over school funding. But only in Kansas have judges tried to quantify the quality of education.
The Eastern European city found a way to offer free rides to citizens for a small cost to government. The U.S. has tried it before. Will cities try it again?
With kids on the decline in urban areas, cities can make themselves more attractive to young families by building more playgrounds.
After years under Michael Bloomberg, known to many as a “downtown mayor,” New Yorkers are looking to their new mayor to refocus resources on communities.
It’s a tempting idea, but cities simply don’t have the power to do what most of their residents want them to do.
After years of stagnation following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is building itself a new economy.
Privatizing parking meters was a disaster for Chicago. So why is Cincinnati doing it?
We measure school performance by test scores because it’s easy. But no simplistic set of A-F grades can ever account for all the intangible ways schools nurture their pupils.
One minute, states are complaining about the federal government meddling in their business. The next, they're imposing dictatorial mandates on localities.
The wealthy Virginia county outside Washington, D.C., has been free of the nasty political environment home to its neighbors – until now. Causing the controversy is a proposed streetcar, which nearly a dozen cities are building.
Despite its high murder rate, dysfunctional schools and aging transit, the central area of Chicago is growing faster than any other big city.
The laboratories of democracy have reopened after the recession. But they’re not delivering the results that most experts have been conditioned to expect from them.
Citizens and public officials alike aren't very good at evaluating risk and making intelligent decisions about it.
States are the level of government we go to because we don't expect the others to succeed.
You've heard it said, no doubt, that states have been a little timid this year about raising taxes to get themselves out of economic trouble. That's true--at least for those who don't smoke or drink.
Once upon a time in this country, architects did everything they could to sound like romantic poets. Generations of history students have faithfully copied down Daniel Burnham's pompous but powerful admonition to "make no little plans--they have no magic to stir men's blood."
Every year, this magazine honors people who have accomplished impressive things in state or local government.
"If all who are engaged in the profession of education were willing to state the facts instead of making greater promises than they can possibly fulfill, they would not be in such bad repute with the lay public."
Forty years ago, American society looked into the transportation future and found it thrilling. The first U.S. astronaut had orbited the earth. Preparations for a moon landing were underway.
How's this for a juicy scandal: A state legislature sets up publicly funded caucuses to assist its majority and minority parties with legislative research and strategy.
It isn't the teenagers who are the main obstacle to safer licensing laws; it's their parents.
When people think about Montana, "consensus" isn't the first idea that pops into their heads. "Conflict" would be more like it. The history of Big Sky Country is filled with epic confrontations between farmers and ranchers, miners and copper companies, environmentalists and property owners.
The importance of governors lies not in their being electoral power brokers or potential presidential candidates but in making policy.
Oregon has long had a reputation as a health-conscious place, so you probably won't be surprised to learn that people there don't smoke quite as much as people in the rest of the country.
On a wall at my neighborhood community house, in Arlington County, Virginia, there are two gold plaques with 43 names on them. They are the names of all the people who have served as president of the Lyon Village Citizens Association since 1926, the year the neighborhood was created.
El Paso has always been a little bit eccentric. When the state university campus was built there, in the 1920s, the local leaders chose Bhutanese architecture, based on an obscure style used in the Himalayas in medieval times.
1It's a cliche that there are no great Washington novels. I don't know if it's true or not. It may be. The book most often cited as a candidate, "Democracy," by Henry Adams, was written 120 years ago; in recent times, more critics probably have praised it than have read it.
There was a small news item in last month's issue of this magazine. The Business of Government section reported on a new online program in Missouri that gathers disease data from 50 labs and hospitals and tells the Health Department almost instantly if something resembling an epidemic is loose in the state.
There's something about the subject of public housing that saps the enthusiasm of even the most dutiful students of government. Self- described policy wonks who have little trouble discoursing on the Medicaid dual-eligible problem or the mass transit mode split start to fidget when anybody brings up Section 8 or Hope VI.
One afternoon in the fall of 1995, John McDonough tells us in his new book, "Experiencing Politics," he was sitting in his seat on the floor of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as the chamber prepared to vote on a huge tax break for Raytheon, the locally based defense contractor.
The mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, is talking about an experiment he launched earlier this year. Once a week, his department heads and senior managers are required to appear at an open meeting and answer questions from ordinary voters. "I learned that from the Sandinistas," he says.
If there's any group of American citizens you wouldn't expect to find at the cutting edge of political reform, it's the lobster fishermen along the coast of Maine. Not only do they have a national reputation for being cranky loners--they readily accept it.
"Why do I love Paris?" Cole Porter keeps asking, in one of his least clever songs. "Why, oh why, do I love Paris?" Finally he ends the suspense. It's because his sweetie is in the neighborhood.
Philosophy students occasionally wile away idle moments by arguing over what constitutes a truly victimless crime. It's a more complicated issue than one might suppose.
In the mid-1980s, when metropolitan Portland first began planning a light-rail line, the downtown merchants in suburban Gresham, Oregon, discussed the issue and reached a quick consensus: They didn't want it.
You and I might not agree on the best American governors of recent years, but we would probably agree on what makes a governor effective. Mostly, it's a matter of having a coherent program and finding ways to get it enacted.
Economists have a reputation for being cool and dispassionate, but a few phrases or concepts have the capacity to turn even the meekest of them into hectoring ideologues, exasperated with the inability of others to exercise simple common sense.
The Minnesota House and Senate went home for the summer a few weeks ago, having concluded a legislative session that left just about everyone disappointed.
Since crises aren't predictable, we can only hope to have the right leader at the right moment.
Millions will be spent in this year's battle for the Wisconsin legislature. But the candidates won't know where most of the money is coming from. They'll be bystanders in their own campaigns.
I remember being taught in the fourth grade that one of the few really noble elements of human nature was the willingness to put aside differences in time of crisis. It's no fairy tale, either; we've all seen it dozens of times. A river floods, or a city is devastated by an earthquake or terrorists strike without warning--and all of a sudden there's a feeling of common purpose and a suspension of petty bickering.
On a wall at my neighborhood community house, in Arlington County, Virginia, there are two gold plaques with 43 names on them.
We've told this story in Governing before, but it makes the point so well that I hope you'll indulge my telling it one more time: There's a common pesticide called Atrazine that's used by farmers in many of the grain fields of the Midwest.
A few weeks ago, the Vermont Senate discussed a proposal to require that all state judges step down from office upon reaching the age of 110. This may sound like the mootest of moot points, given that no jurist in Vermont--or anywhere in the world, I imagine--has ever lived that long. But it had a purpose.
A few weeks ago, the chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority descended 100 feet below ground, unfurled a huge American flag, announced the opening of a tunnel, and began scouring history for superlatives. "This project," he boasted, "rivals the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal."
On the far west side of Detroit, between the murky River Rouge and the suburb of Dearborn, sits a little neighborhood called Copper Canyon. It's a pleasant community of modest brick bungalows, manicured lawns and peaceful streets. It's also one of the few integrated neighborhoods remaining in the city.
Back when Lester Maddox was governor of Georgia, in the late 1960s, there was a riot at the state prison. Reporters asked him what he planned to do about the conditions that caused the trouble. Maddox rejected the entire premise of the question. "There's nothing wrong with our prison system," he said. "We just don't have a very good class of prisoners anymore."
We Americans profess not to like nepotism very much, but when we see it on a grand enough scale, we're intrigued. We're not bothered by a presidential election in which both of the candidates owe every political triumph in life to the exploits of their fathers. We can get used to the idea of the president's brother as attorney general, or the president's wife as chief domestic policy adviser.
Most of the time, it doesn't bother me when people talk about political issues in moral language. In fact, it bothers me when they don't.
Granville Hicks, the literary critic, would have been a hundred years old a few weeks ago. Hicks died in 1982, and so he isn't exactly a household name anymore--I didn't know much about him myself until I ran across a copy of "Small Town," his portrait of the village of Grafton, New York, written just at the end of World War II. But the story is worth remembering, both for the unusual life the author led and for the ideas he emerged with after decades of personal struggle.
All things being equal, Bob Keenan is a man who prefers to have government stay out of the way and let private enterprise tackle the tough societal jobs.
There was a time, not too long ago, when almost everyone in Seattle remembered Caspar Sharples. He was a revered physician and educator during the early years of this century, the founder of two hospitals and a guiding force behind development of the city's school system.
When I started writing this column, I promised myself I wouldn't use it as a soapbox for personal grudges or quarrels. It can come off as bad sportsmanship, and most of the time, it bores the reader. But some opportunities are just too juicy to pass up.
Somewhere in America, I suppose, there is a public official who believes unreservedly in devolution--believes that power, autonomy and flexibility should reside as far down in the governmental system as practically possible--and is willing to act on the basis of those beliefs, even at the expense of his own political authority.
At the intersection of Wilson and Highland streets, a few blocks from where I live in Arlington, Virginia, there is a big, gaping hole in the ground. It isn't much to look at, as you might expect. But it's a hole in the ground with a rich history. If you will indulge me in a few paragraphs of local nostalgia, I think I can use it to draw some lessons about the ways of growth, planning and survival these days in metropolitan America.
There are some who say that direct democracy is the wave of the future in American government. If I may be excused for paraphrasing John F. Kennedy, let them come to Denver.
I'm not a lawyer, so I've never aspired to being a judge. But I sometimes indulge in fantasies about the sort of judge I would be, if given the chance. I'd be a wonderful judge--patient, fair-minded, even-tempered, witty, self-deprecating--but above all, restrained.
Abolishing elected treasurers, auditors and commissioners would probably do more good than harm.
For years, Boston's Tom Menino has argued that retail commerce is the key to revitalizing urban neighborhoods. Other cities have begun to listen.
I used to think that, for some reason, the American judicial system was avoiding me. Over more than three decades of adult life, as a citizen of three different jurisdictions, I had never once served on a jury.
I can't imagine many of you have been to the New Hampshire House of Representatives. But I can help visualize it for you: Just close your eyes and think of an old public high school auditorium.
A few years ago, I went for a drive through the winding streets of Emery Manor, a subdivision of small, Levittown-like rambler houses built in the Chicago suburbs in the early 1950s. People in the older neighborhoods nearby said terrible things about Emery Manor when it was going up: They called it a drab, tasteless collection of identical tiny boxes, scarcely better than shacks.
Mike Huckabee, the governor of Arkansas, is as amiable a fellow as most governors, and normally spends a good deal of his time traveling around the state and mixing with his constituents.
There are two significant things to say right off the bat about Florida's new statewide anti-poverty program.
The problem is, it couldn't still be there. Small local bookstores can't make a go of it in most places these days. I wish that weren't true, but it is.
Early in the Nixon administration, when supporters of civil rights worried that the new president was about to follow up on the racially divisive rhetoric of his 1968 campaign, Attorney General John Mitchell sought to reassure them with a few simple words: "Don't watch what we say--watch what we do."
The 20th century produced a pantheon of brilliant urban thinkers and planners. Some built, some mostly wrote, some did both. Some did better than others at translating their ideas into reality. But one way or another, we are living with the consequences of their vision:
Amnesty and forgiveness are two different things. Amnesty is indiscriminate--the canceling of debt, obligation or penalty not out of a desire for individual justice but out of a belief that there is something to be gained by simply wiping the slate clean.
A few minutes into the movie "Traffic," in a Washington, D.C., cocktail party scene, an amiable red-haired man offers some wisdom about the nation's drug problem: "You'll never solve this on the supply side."
Twenty-five years ago, a mayor of Chicago was defeated for renomination because of an insult rendered by his public transit system. The city was digging out from a blizzard, and there weren't enough trains to carry all the passengers who needed service.
If you live in Louisville, this is the time of year when it hurts your pride a little bit just to pick up the sports page. The cities that are your natural rivals--cities that used to rank right alongside you in size, image and self-confidence--are winning priceless national publicity on the professional football field.
It's difficult to notice dogs that don't bark, as Sherlock Holmes demonstrated more than a century ago. It's also difficult to notice phones that don't ring.
"My fellow citizens, I rise today to speak in opposition to affordable housing, quality day care and the Baptist Church." I briefly considered saying those words a few weeks ago as I spent a long Saturday afternoon at a County Board meeting in Arlington, Virginia, waiting for the five minutes allotted to me as a citizen speaker on a public issue.
Fifty-eight years ago, Justice Felix Frankfurter told his brethren to stay out of the business of drawing political maps. "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket," Frankfurter warned in Colegrove v. Green. "The fulfillment of this duty cannot be judicially enforced."
The conventional wisdom about suburbs and sprawl can change dramatically over time.
After centuries of abuse, gridded streets are finally getting some respect.
Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that 2006 may be something more than a routine veto year.
A successful transit line means a more intense commercial life around the stations, and that means higher property values, higher rents and the invasion of chain stores.
The past decade has brought a marked increase in partisan unpleasantness in legislative bodies almost everywhere in the country.
Nebraska's single-house legislative body is unlike any that has existed in any state before or since.
Does an unconventional coalition in Colorado offer a model for Democrats around the country?
We have a weakness for anointing eager young sons with modest credentials, solely on the strength of their connection to fathers we wouldn't take back if they begged us.
Going after NACO for convening in Hawaii may be a bit of a cheap shot, but it's one that local TV news will ...
Maybe it's my Jetson-era upbringing, but I've always had a weakness for the Seattle monorail project. Some of it was just my own contrarianism, I ...
I've been arguing for years that nobody in national politics really believes in federalism--not as an end in itself. Federalism and devolution are just ideological ...
Fifteen years ago or so, around the time legislatures were first passing term limits laws, we ran an article in this magazine pondering what life ...
"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The author of a new state law that allows felony charges against owners of dangerous dogs was hospitalized over the ...
I haven't looked at any financial statements from Arnold Schwarzenegger or Michael Bloomberg lately, so I don't know just how rich either of them is.&...
I find myself pondering a lunchtime talk I heard yesterday by Chris Leinberger, the developer and New Urbanist thinker who's currently involved in recreating downtown ...
I ran into Tom Cronin, the political scientist, the other day, and he raised a really interesting question that I couldn't answer. The question was ...
I never know what the reaction is going to be to my Assessments column in Governing when it is published each month. Some months there ...
Having written a story for Governing's February issue on coalition politics in Colorado -- and having touted Colorado all year as a state that offers ...
It's been amusing to watch the Minnesota university system and state legislature squabble over what to call the new stadium that will be built on ...
Well, Sunday morning I'll be running around the house grumbling about all the clocks, just like I do twice every year, wondering ...
So much has been said already about Jane Jacobs in the short time since her death -- or will be said in ...
Those Supreme Court justices, they're a bunch of teasers, aren't they? For the past 20 years they've been saying that raw partisan gerrymandering is potentially unconstitutional ...
Wandering around the NCSL website the other day, I stumbled on some interesting figures on the gender makeup of legislatures. Women comprise about 23 percent of ...
A belated thought about what happened in Virginia last Tuesday, and what it might mean for other states: There was a time, not too ...
I guess I shouldn't be surprised when Adrian Fenty says his first priority as mayor of DC will be fixing ...
Here's a interesting new law: In Illinois, from now on, if you change your name and then run for office within three ...
In a conversation last week with Michael Nutter, who is all but certain to become mayor of Philadelphia in a few months, I was struck by a couple of things: the dramatic return of the crime issue in urban politics right now, and the dilemma an incoming mayor such as Nutter faces in trying to deal with it.
A short article in the Chicago Sun-Times last week got me thinking again about a local politics issue that's more interesting than it may seem: the rules for zoned residential parking.
Here's one of the more unusual "State of the State" stories I"ve seen in a while. A couple of weeks ...
We all learned in school about the Battle of New Orleans, the glorious American military victory in the War of 1812 that took place weeks after ...
This fall, Parkview High School, in Lilburn, Georgia, was unable to field a ninth-grade football team. That is no tragedy; many schools have never even...
Gregory Bialecki wants something for Massachusetts that no other state has: a comprehensive statewide zoning code. He thinks that's needed to break down the longstanding...
Governing Correspondent Rob Gurwitt went to Los Angeles to get a feel for the politics and policies of its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. I talked with...
Why the double-yellow stripe is making a comeback in downtowns.