Real People. Real Stories. Real America.
Towns and cities from coast to coast are today’s incubators for ideas driving the modern story of American renewal. From the arts to education, from public policy to sustainability, from craft beer to river walks, people are experimenting in innovative ways that drive progress. We tell the stories of what they’re doing here.
Parks, Rec & Fun
Welcome Marketplace Listeners, to American Futures
Kicking off a new collaborative project
Economic & Business Development
Welcome to Sioux Falls
A successful, energetic, rough-edged, and therefore typically American town
From the Readers
American Futures: Grand Finale Holland-Palooza
A small arena in which many dramas are being played out.
Economic & Business Development
The Next Lesson From Holland: Why Local Money Matters
In an age of globalized companies and relentless focus on “shareholder value,” a reminder of what local ownership can mean.
Education
The Surprising News From One Small Town About Immigration Reform
In a place as unlike Miami, New York, or L.A. as you can imagine, America’s unsettled immigration policy has a profound effect.
Parks, Rec & Fun
Today’s Frightening / Inspiring Aerial Videos
How fire-fighting looks from the tanker-pilots’ point of view.
Reports From America
Rapid City Report:
What Does Green Mean?
Parks, Rec & Fun
If We’re Talking American Orientalism …
Read the story in The Atlantic here. Etching of the ominous country under discussion, above, by Janet Edwards of Redlands. … as I was doing previously here and here, I thought it would be worth going back to re-read Joan Didion’s 1966 Saturday Evening Post article that so offended my home town back when I was in high school and before Joan […]
Parks, Rec & Fun
A Theory of Mountain Flying
The safety virtues of multi-modal transportation.
Economic & Business Development
The ‘Rapid’ Story:
Trains, Planes, and the Making of a City
From the Readers
Readers on ‘American Orientalism’
Good thing I didn’t mention snowmobiles.
Arts
On the ‘Orientalism’ of the Prairie
What happens when the “ordinary objects of our culture” are treated as curiosities.