Civic Life Archives - Page 5 of 11

Students on university campus at tree-planting event

James Fallows
May 24, 2021

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.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, soon after his inauguration, delivering his first Fireside Chat, in March, 1933.

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Civic Life

‘My Friends’: Communications and a ‘National Family’

James Fallows
May 8, 2021

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

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Civic Life

Our Towns Civic Foundation: The Idea, and the Goals

James Fallows
April 19, 2021

What is the idea behind this site and the Our Towns Civic Foundation? And what are the goals? Here’s a brief summary.

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Civic Life

‘On Such a Full Sea…’

James Fallows
April 19, 2021

Welcome to the Our Towns Civic Foundation site! The purpose of this note is to introduce a new film; to connect the news of the moment to the largest possibilities of the era; and to explain the ambitions of the project of which this site is part.

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Civic Life

A Vibrant American Musical Career, far From America’s Cultural Capitals

James Fallows
April 12, 2021

What Larry Groce discovered by launching a national radio program from an out-of-the-way location

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Economic Development

Three Guides to the Next America

James Fallows
April 12, 2021

This note is to kick off a resumed set of chronicles in the “Our Towns” series, after time away for a long Atlantic project on the origins of this era’s public-health and…

A weekend market in Ajo, Arizona, in 2015, back when people were encouraged to congregate.

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Civic Life

Local Efforts in a Time of Extreme Global Stress

James Fallows
April 12, 2021

The theme in this “Our Towns” space has been, and remains, the sources of vitality, practicality, generosity, and renewal in local-level America, despite bitter polarization in national-level politics. The series began almost…

Michael Jones leans against a stone wall, smiling slightly, with a mountain behind him.

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Governance

How Michael Jones Changed Our Daily Lives

James Fallows
January 26, 2021

"Everyone is an inventor; you need only ignore limits and preconceptions then ask yourself 'how should it be?' "

An abandoned-looking steel mill on a sunny day.

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Economic Development

How to Reconnect Rural and Urban America

James Fallows
November 23, 2020

Some recent items worth noticing

The burnt remains of trees in the hills of Santa Barbara, California, after the Cave Fire in 2019.

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Civic Life

A ‘Climate Corps’ of California Volunteers

James Fallows
September 28, 2020

Designed to address both the causes and the effects of California's exposure to climate change.

Governance

Another Lesson From the Roman Empire

James Fallows
August 7, 2020

From Sulla to Sullen: What the Fall of the Roman Republic Tells Us About Where Trump Is Taking Us.

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Health & Well-Being

The 3 Weeks That Changed Everything

James Fallows
June 29, 2020

Imagine if the National Transportation Safety Board investigated America's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Crumbled storefront of downtown building in 1968.

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Civic Life

Is This the Worst Year in Modern American History?

James Fallows
May 31, 2020

Comparing 2020 to 1968 offers some disquieting lessons for the present.

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Health & Well-Being

A Rural Health Center With a Pandemic Plan

Deborah Fallows
April 9, 2020

The Rowland B. French Medical Center is the primary health-care facility for the residents of Eastport, Maine, a tiny Down East fishing town, population 1,400. Eastport was one of the…

Morning in Cleveland, Ohio, where Belt Publishing is based.

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Civic Life

Books for This Moment

James Fallows
April 8, 2020

The past weeks have of course meant economic devastation for small and local businesses of all sorts, as discussed here in an item about Erie. The pressures on local bookstores and…

Josh Fryday announcing the Civic Action Fellowship in February of this year.

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Citizen Engagement

A New Way for Californians to Serve

James Fallows
April 7, 2020

The coronavirus peril is global. Much of the response must, of course, be international or national if it is to matter at all. In the United States, only the federal…