The Real Estate Deal that Could Change the Future of Everything (Atlantic Cities)
Under a new company called Fundrise, the Millers invited anyone in the area – accredited or not – to invest online in this one building and its future business for shares as small as $100, in a public offering qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission. By the time the deal closed last week, 175 people had together invested $325,000, for just under a third of the whole project. If the rest of this experiment works like the Millers hope it will, the idea embedded in this one unassuming storefront could have an impact on communities everywhere.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Chicago's Urban Farm District Could be the Biggest in the Nation (Grist)
"In the coming weeks, the city’s planning department is expected to approve the creation of a green belt with a strong focus on urban agriculture within the neighborhood of Englewood. The plan is an element of Chicago’s Department of Housing and Economic Development’s (DHE) Green Healthy Neighborhoods initiative, designed to shepherd and foster redevelopment in 13 square miles of the South Side. Years of disinvestment and population decline have left the area riddled with 11,000 vacant lots totaling 800 acres."
The Political Geography of 21st Century America
2012 will likely be recognized as a more pivotal moment in the history of America than 2008. Despite a weak economy, despite voter suppression, despite the unprecedented amount of corporate money supporting Mitt Romney's blatantly dishonest and cynical campaign, The United States re-elected President Barack Obama and symbolically rejected radical Republican social and economic ideology. Of course the Democratic victory was not universal. The United States is a culturally and economically divided nation. Geographically we are most clearly divided between diverse urban areas and conservative rural and ex-urban counties.
Since the 1960's the Democratic Party has promoted civil rights policies that have absorbed new social groups into its electorate while the Republicans have increasingly become a party that derives its energy from white backlash and religious fundamentalism while promoting economic policies that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. Republicans re-framed the national debate over the role of government by ideologically tying the basic initiatives of the New Deal and social safety net (education, health care, poverty assistance) to urban minorities. For forty years the Republican narrative has repeatedly reinforced an idea that the "Real America" of white, rural and suburbanites are the true source of our national prosperity that they are perpetually burdened by an undeserving poor, urban, minority population.
Republican mythology has of course ignored the Federal Government's overwhelming promotion of suburban middle class life through home loan guarantees, tax deductions and highly subsidized infrastructure and gas. The lily white suburban dream would never have been a realistic possibility for the majority of Americans without massive federal support. It was always a dream - fueled momentarily by cheap energy and a consumption based economy. Mass suburbanization was, in many ways, a 60 year experiment in economic stimulation through physical expansion, over-consumption and debt accumulation. That dream, the white suburban dream, is over.
Picket Fence Apocalypse (Charles M. Blow, NYTimes)
The Real Reason Cities Lean Democratic (Atlantic Cities)
The Techies Who Helped Re-Elect Obama (The Atlantic)
No Southern Comfort for Wishful Liberals (The New Republic)
Since the 1960's the Democratic Party has promoted civil rights policies that have absorbed new social groups into its electorate while the Republicans have increasingly become a party that derives its energy from white backlash and religious fundamentalism while promoting economic policies that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. Republicans re-framed the national debate over the role of government by ideologically tying the basic initiatives of the New Deal and social safety net (education, health care, poverty assistance) to urban minorities. For forty years the Republican narrative has repeatedly reinforced an idea that the "Real America" of white, rural and suburbanites are the true source of our national prosperity that they are perpetually burdened by an undeserving poor, urban, minority population.
Republican mythology has of course ignored the Federal Government's overwhelming promotion of suburban middle class life through home loan guarantees, tax deductions and highly subsidized infrastructure and gas. The lily white suburban dream would never have been a realistic possibility for the majority of Americans without massive federal support. It was always a dream - fueled momentarily by cheap energy and a consumption based economy. Mass suburbanization was, in many ways, a 60 year experiment in economic stimulation through physical expansion, over-consumption and debt accumulation. That dream, the white suburban dream, is over.
Picket Fence Apocalypse (Charles M. Blow, NYTimes)
The Real Reason Cities Lean Democratic (Atlantic Cities)
The Techies Who Helped Re-Elect Obama (The Atlantic)
No Southern Comfort for Wishful Liberals (The New Republic)
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
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| Image Source |
"The people of Beijing seem excited about how their city is being shaped. And so they should be. Architecture in China today is bold and unapologetic.
But it embodies China’s rapid growth in less positive ways, too. Although the industry is buoyant these days, its long-term benefits for the people who live here are questionable. Too often, form trumps function."
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