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Tax Plan to Cities: Drop Dead
You may have paid little attention to the tax plan rushing headlong through Congress. It has been advertised as a middle-class tax break and an inducement to business to create jobs through a dramatically lowered corporate tax rate. Pay attention, especially if you live in a city or suburb, as most of us do. Read more
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Disaster Recovery Secret Weapon: Neighborhood Groups
In a year of extraordinary disasters, the sheer scope of recovery and rebuilding can seem mind boggling. We’re tempted to turn away in horror at buildings with roofs ripped off in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, the pancaked structures in Mexico City, the piles of debris in Houston front yards. Government and private aid groups Read more
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In a Summer of Subway Hell, Learning from London
New York subway delays became epidemic this summer and emergency repairs at Penn Station snarled commuter traffic. A recent column by the NYT’s Michael Kimmelman ruminated on these transit woes and . . . Brexit. The column looked at London’s Crossrail—a $20-billion expansion of the city’s crowded transit system that is a heroic feat of Read more
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Housing for Shelter, Not Investors
First it was billionaires. Now the so-called Creative Class and its Millennial progeny are deemed responsible for The New Urban Crisis, which is what Creative Class guru Richard Florida has dubbed enormous inequality in cities, the concentration of extreme poverty, and the tsunami of gentrification that displaces lower-income people. (His book by that name, which I Read more
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Why You’ll Never Get a Raise under Trump
I am no labor expert but all the things I know much more about —and usually write about—from climate change to transportation and architecture—were held hostage in this election to voters who wanted a dramatic change in their economic prospects—i.e., a raise in wages to be orchestrated by the self-anointed business genius (but serial bankrupt) Read more
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You Can Stop Trump’s Disastrous Cabinet
The Republican Senate is attempting to rush hearings for President Trump’s cabinet choices. Everyone has to act now to insist that Congress follow established procedures and law for vetting ethics and conflicts of interest. Several candidates with many interests involving the government have yet to file the paperwork necessary to show how they will separate Read more
James S. Russell 