LEADERS & GOVERNANCE

Human’s Power versus Nature’s Power

What power do communities have at the local level when it comes to the environment?

RURAL & REGIONAL

Americans Are Again Remaking Their Landscape. What We Know About Where We Are Headed.

The 1880s, the 1930s, the 1950s—they dramatically reshaped America. The 2020s are likely to do so as well.

CIVIC LIFE

Greater than the Sum of Its Parts

How Gender and Racial Biases Create Ironies that Defeat Good Organizations

CIVIC LIFE

Organizational Irony in Small Town USA

What can a look at the paradoxes of power and failed leadership teach communities?

CIVIC LIFE

Exposing What was Already Present

The pandemic provides an opportunity to focus on justice and equity in Erie, Pennsylvania.

BIG LITTLE IDEAS

A California Project, with Nationwide Ambitions

American history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Crises keep cropping up--and so do ideas and solutions. Many innovations from the 1930s have new relevance for the post-pandemic 2020s. Here is an example, and the thinking behind it.

BIG LITTLE IDEAS

A Plan to Grow 90,000 Trees in Los Angeles

Using tree planting as an axis to connect job creation, climate sustainability, urban renewal, and economic equity and inclusion.

TRANSPORTATION

Reviving the economy, restoring community, and helping sustainability: a plan.

Two Republican presidents -- Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight Eisenhower -- offered bold new approaches to transportation as part of their national strategy. A proposal

CIVIC LIFE

In 1933, a new president found a new way of unifying a public in time of crisis.

What the presidential addresses of 1933 tell us about the America of 2021.

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

New Lessons of the New Deal

I was talking with the mayor of a "red state" city about how his community was weathering today's public-health and financial crises.