The Elusive Walkable Life
Many people value the idea of living in a walkable, human-scale community. Yet they remain the exception rather than the rule in both Canada and the United States. Why?
Category: Society
The articles here explore what may be the most significant challenges facing the United States and Canada—apart from urban sprawl—in creating good human habitat. In the United States, this involves the legacy of an unresolved racial history. In Canada, it involves the use of mass immigration as a growth strategy, often driving poorly planned development.
Two sets of maps explain why so few middle-class parents raise children in American cities.
Maps made 80 years apart reveal how successful 1930s-era policymakers were in setting in motion the downfall of urban life for middle-class families.
How Urban Sprawl and the Legacy of Slavery Undermine Quality of Life
What does self-interest entail given what urban sprawl and our unique domestic history?
The Value of Making Sense of an Unresolved Past
In America, an unresolved, poorly understood racial past reverberates in the present with...
Democracy and the Human-Scale
In the photograph above, you see an eleven-year-old boy wearing a tie who is looking up at the...
My Patriotic Education
The better I understood our racial caste system—and a family member’s key role in shaping it—the more deeply American I felt in a positive sense.
America’s Fortune Tellers and Their Unheeded Warnings
Fortune tellers. They size you up, read your body language, make vague, generalized statements, take your money, then send you on your way. Few of us put much stock in fortune tellers.
