Andrew Macurak
Kelo v. Sotomayor
Kelo v. New London remains a sticky subject. (Ongoing debate in Shelterforce and Rooflines is proof of that.) The 2005 Supreme Court case that...
Will The Creative Class Fly Back?
Perhaps this is a pointer to where America’s recovery will come from. Some of the less fashionable parts of the country may quietly get...
New President, “New Deal”: New Plan?
With the scramble for Pennsylvania’s natural gas reserves growing in its news coverage, we are reminded that one reason the Rust Belt was industrialized...
History of the World (Part II)
Deja vu: the sensation that you are doing something that you have done before.
In an eerily familiar Web-only piece, Laura Brunts and Theodore Kahn...
Trash: Pick It Up
Though questions about how we’re going to buy stuff in post-credit America may dominate the news, some interesting stories about what we’re going to...
Some Act
Between the recent string of bank failures and shotgun weddings, Citigroup’s FDIC-brokered purchase of troubled Wachovia this morning, and talk of handing off a...
Border Patrol
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Community Survey, and with it announced a new class...
Where Do Houses Go When They Die? (Apparently, Pennsylvania)
The late George Carlin once quipped that “Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets...
Core and Periphery: “Trading Places”?
In a cover story for the latest issue of The New Republic, Governing Magazine editor Alan Ehrenhalt proclaims that the American city has reinvented...
The Urban, Dystopian Blame Game
Like any number of small- and big-screen thrillers, the film’s engagement with 9/11 is diffuse, more a matter of inference and ideas (chaos, fear,...
Tuscany, Barcelona, Croatia… the Rust Belt?
This weekend, the New York Times suggested Pittsburgh as a destination (for at least 36 hours) alongside these locales, and as of my writing...
Let’s Talk About CDCs…
…that is if we could. Awareness of community development, both within the larger progressive movement and in the country as a whole, is tragically...
Think Globally, Act Regionally
Several other Rooflines bloggers have speculated about the impact of a new emphasis on metropolitan areas coming from the federal level. This past Friday,...
You Don’t Support Our Transit, But We Should Support Your Highway?
Overcoming pleas that such a measure will destroy small businesses – just as similar measures apparently have destroyed all small businesses in...
Not Your Father’s Electorate (Instead, His Father’s)
The Republican vote was as high as ever. But the Democratic candidate still won — because more Democrats turned out to the polls than...
Follow your counter-intuition?
Builders have not responded as aggressively as they have in the past. There hasn’t been the oversupply that is typical in this kind...
Stirring Up Change in the Steel Belt
The steel belt, once famous for its smoky cities, is capitalizing on a renewed public awareness of the environment to achieve tangible neighborhood change....