Andrew Macurak

17 Posts

Policy

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 upheld a municipality’s ability to take […]

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 on with the business of growing. […]

Equity

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 to begin with was for its […]

Policy

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 of The Atlantic recap vintage […]

Equity

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 do with that stuff once we’re […]

Policy

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 heaping helping of toxic mortgage debt […]

panoramic view of Pittsburgh
Financial System

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 of America’s poorest big cities: Toledo, […]

Policy

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 stuck.” When homeowners die, or are […]

Neighborhood Change

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 itself by becoming the suburbs. Ehrenhalt […]

Equity

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, death) than of direct assertion. So […]

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 this post, the article remains the […]

community development field
Community Development Field

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 limited. This is due in part […]