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Urban America Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2009. Letter from the Editor The Ten-Year Plan IAN MERRIFIELD Daring to end homelessness The Future of Urban Education Tiffany wen and jyoti jasrasaria The impact of new innovation on urban school systems Cities Without Limits Chris danello and ashley fabrizio How long-term factors drive municipal economies A New Approach to a Chronic ... Read More

The connection between economic diversity and urban renewal Urban areas have a tendency to build upon themselves. Perhaps as long as cities have existed, they have been in the process of being ‘renewed.’ In modern urban America, the issue of renewal is intricately intertwined with the concept of gentrification, whereby the demographics of a neighborhood shift to favor wealthier individuals. ... Read More

Chicago’s ‘machine’ in the 21st century “Machine politics in Chicago started in 1871 as a partnership between saloonkeepers, brothel owners, and politicians,” Richard Simpson, former Chicago alderman and current head of the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explained to the HPR. The Chicago machine became one of many urban juggernauts dotting the American political landscape ... Read More

The importance of community-based responses to gang violence Gang violence devastates American urban life. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2000 there were over 24,000 gangs and over 700,000 gang members nationwide. The Child Trends Databank reports that almost three-quarters of teen deaths resulted from gang violence in 2002. These statistics bespeak the necessity of combating gang violence ... Read More

The future of urban transportation While Washington debates the economic mayhem surrounding bailouts and foreclosures, a more mundane phenomenon quietly imposes tremendous economic costs on America’s urban areas: traffic jams. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that urban traffic congestion causes a $78 billion annual drain on the economy, in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons ... Read More

Affordable housing in uncertain times About 12 million Americans spend more than half of their annual income on rent or mortgage, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Affordable housing is of particular concern in urban centers, due to high population densities and costs of living. Even after the collapse of the housing bubble, paying rent remains ... Read More

How long-term factors drive municipal economies In May 2008, the city of Vallejo, Calif. became the first urban victim of the global financial crisis when it filed for Chapter Nine bankruptcy, the first Californian city ever to do so. Defending this decision, Vallejo’s mayor argued that a weak economy caused by the bursting of the housing bubble had left the ... Read More

The impact of new innovations on urban school systems The 1983 report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, entitled “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Education Reform,” established the need for a comprehensive assessment of the nation’s schools in order to meet the challenges of a changing national and international community. The report set off a series ... Read More

Daring to end homelessness While the recent collapse of the U.S. housing market has prompted a renewed debate about American homeownership and its future, the related topic of homelessness has remained largely ignored. Hundreds of thousands of citizens live lives of addiction and mental illness on the streets of American cities. On any given day, 900,000 people — including 200,000 ... Read More

In Pursuit of the More Perfect City Since 1630, when John Winthrop first exhorted his fellow Puritans to “be as a city upon a hill,” America has preoccupied itself with serving as an exemplar. Indeed, perhaps no belief plays a more important role in the American psyche than the concept of national perfectibility. Speaking of a “more perfect union,” the ... Read More

Obama’s education plan Speaking at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in March, President Obama called for reforming American education with the goal that we “once more [become] the envy of the world.” The president’s ambition is reflected in his proposed five-year, $2.5 billion Access and Completion Incentive Fund, which aims to create reliable pathways to college graduation for students ... Read More

Should housing really come first? The idea is deceptively simple: how do you solve homelessness? By giving people homes. That is the essence of a recently developed approach to homelessness called Housing First, which inverts the traditional shelter-based approach by first providing the homeless with apartments, and then working on issues like drug addiction and psychiatric problems. The advocates of ... Read More

The future of gerrymandering after the 2010 census When Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) withdrew his nomination for commerce secretary in February, Republicans blamed the debacle on the White House’s alleged attempt to usurp control of the 2010 census, which rests with the Commerce Department. This short-lived controversy reminded us that while the census might be one of the least visible, ... Read More

Concerns over the role of the poll are misguided The high number of public opinion polls was impossible to miss during the 2008 election, and, though the horserace is on break, professional pollsters are keeping busy. Polling is no longer a part-time business, and a wide variety of opinion polls, covering everything from congressional and presidential job approval to health ... Read More

Have the FARC finally met their match? A recent string of defeats for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Latin America’s oldest, largest, and most dangerous rebel group, signals perhaps the best chance Colombia has had for peace in 44 years of armed struggle. During much of the 1990s, a drug-fueled civil war between left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, and ... Read More

Russia’s campaign against missile defense in Europe Ballistic missile defense — once derided as “Star Wars” by critics — is finally coming into its own as a major component of the geopolitical landscape in Europe. The extreme difficulty of hitting an intercontinental ballistic missile traveling at Mach 25 with a counter-missile, which experts say is like shooting a bullet with ... Read More

Sunni-Shia conflict and the logic of containment In 2003, for the first time in history, the Shia were poised to take control of a major Arab state. But the toppling of the Sunni-dominated regime in Iraq was followed by horrifying levels of ethnic violence, bringing the divide between Sunni and Shia to the forefront and highlighting the tendency of sectarian ... Read More

Ban Ki-moon’s first two years at the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has cultivated many nicknames over the course of his long and illustrious career as a diplomat. As the foreign minister of South Korea, he was called Ban-chusa, a moniker meaning both “bureaucrat” and “administrative-clerk.” His colleagues in the ministry praised him for ... Read More

Anticipating a new era of engagement with Cuba When President Obama signed the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill into law on March 11, he took a small step towards what many hope will be a new era in U.S.-Cuban relations. Embedded in the bill were three clauses that loosened sanctions on family travel and remittances, a largely humanitarian adjustment that nonetheless ... Read More

Can six-party stakeholders return the next volley? On Feb. 13, 2007, six-party talks with North Korea reached a breakthrough. In exchange for economic and energy aid, the regime would begin dismantling its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in a key step towards denuclearization. But a major setback occurred in December 2008, when the D.P.R.K. suddenly halted the process and refused to ... Read More

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How Obama will influence the genre On his posthumously released hit Changes, 2Pac rapped, “Although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to see a black president.” The song addresses problems like police violence, drug use, poverty, and the epidemic of incarceration in the black community.  Blasting what he sees as the offenses of a racist government, he called on ... Read More

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Predicting political realignment Most discussions of youth politics tout blog posts and text messages rather than grand realignments. Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics goes for the latter, and makes the case that America is at the crossroads of a political realignment driven by the distinct character of Millennials. Though the book’s title references new media, ... Read More

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Tolerance and hyperpowers History often remembers empires as power-hungry, violent aggressors that conquer at the expense of victim nations. In Day of Empire, Amy Chua uses case studies of empires of the past, present, and future (such as Rome, America, and potentially, countries like India) as well as failed “hyperpowers” (such as Nazi Germany) to challenge this understanding of empires ... Read More

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How inequality can spiral out of control “Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. “They are very different from you and me.” To this, Ernest Hemingway famously replied: “Yes, they have more money.” This exchange occurred in 1926, a time in America that was very good for the very rich, paralleled by today’s socioeconomic ... Read More

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How much have Texan oilmen shaped America? Reporter Brian Burrough follows his last corporate epic, Barbarians at the Gate, with a new book, The Big Rich, replacing skyscrapers and three piece suits with oil wells and Stetson hats. It is a sprawling story set across several continents, chronicling gumption, love, betrayal, politics, family squabbles, and Muammar al-Gaddafi. But if the  ... Read More

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George Friedman’s geopolitical prophecy The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century is a book that admits it will not get everything right. The author George Friedman, founder of the private intelligence firm STRATFOR, takes up the prophet’s mantle and tells us what the 21st century might look like. His contentions seem, at first glance, fantastic: in 2050, ... Read More

The dangers of translating comics to the big screen Watchmen, a legend among comic books, has long been thought unfilmable, not only by its author, Alan Moore, but also by the comic’s rabid fans, who point to its intricate comics-within-comics, flashbacks, and rapid shifts in focus, all ill-suited to the big screen. After 20 years of abortive efforts, we finally ... Read More

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Jim Himes on his journey from Goldman Sachs to Capitol Hill

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Richard Rothstein on the challenges facing American education

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Former Secretary of Labor on the future of the work force