By Rizalino B. Cruz | Cities are taking the initiative to promote environmental sustainability. They provide incentives for buildings and homes to go green. They adhere to smart growth. They design urban space in a way that facilitates the interactions of human, nature, and built environment. And their latest efforts are directed toward clean energy. Many cities are not only encouraging residents to use but also produce their own electricity through renewable sources. But the road to clean energy is not a straight path. It has twists and turns and many obstacles along the way.
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By Nik Theodore | Immigration policy was a focal point of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which included a pledge to mass-deport millions of unauthorized immigrants currently residing in the United States. Cloaked in the rhetoric of law-and-order policing, the proposed deportations have been presented as a necessary first step towards reforming the nation’s immigration system.
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By Albert Meijer and Marcel Thaens | How can we make our cities safe? Entertainment areas in big cities are places of fun but also of trouble. Thefts and fights frequently occur on these areas when people gather in masses and drink large amounts of alcohol. Police presence may help to enhance safety but is costly and may even have adverse effects. A large police presence may give people the impression that there are problems! For these reasons, cities are looking for innovative ways to enhance the safety of entertainment areas.
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By David Imbroscio | Recent political developments in both the United States and Europe have been, to say the least, jarring. They should give us cause to begin a process of systematically re-evaluating many of our accepted orthodoxies in political strategy and policy development. Regarding the latter, the urban sphere is a critical, if not essential, place to start. For embodied in what we call urban policy lies a host of core values and assumptions regarding what has been the central political question since at least the time of Aristotle: Namely, what constitutes the nature of “the good society,” and how it might be achieved? Urban policy – properly understood – thus is best thought of as representational of all matters concerning the public interest, at least in the sphere of domestic affairs.
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Last year, Urban Affairs Review ran a Mini-Symposium on Urban Governance that featured by articles by Allison Bramwell and Jon Pierre (New Community Spaces), Susan Clarke (Local Place Based Urban Governance), and Jill Simone Gross (Hybridization and Urban Governance). We are now fortunate to have a set of follow-up pieces on Urban Governance written by the same authors to share with you on the Forum. Today we will be posting our second follow-up piece to the series from Jill Simone Gross.
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Last year, Urban Affairs Review ran a Mini-Symposium on Urban Governance that featured by articles by Allison Bramwell and Jon Pierre (New Community Spaces), Susan Clarke (Local Place Based Urban Governance), and Jill Simone Gross (Hybridization and Urban Governance). We are now fortunate to have a set of follow-up pieces on Urban Governance written by the same authors to share with you on the Forum. Today we will be posting our second follow-up piece to the series from Susan E. Clarke.
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By Peter Eisinger | During the Obama years cities around the nation articulated or actively pursued policy initiatives at the vanguard of progressivism. Sometimes these policy commitments were entirely consistent with Obama’s agenda (green cities, gun control) and sometimes they went beyond (the $15 minimum wage, sanctuary cities), but in general the cities were partners with Washington in the progressive project. Many cities also embraced global trade, an Obama priority, seeing both foreign direct investment and export as crucial to local economic fortunes. As the Trump era begins, however, these various progressive and globalist initiatives and commitments will clearly put cities in stark opposition to the national government. Cities across the country—not simply on the coasts but also in the heartland—are already emerging as active or de facto nodes of resistance to the Trump agenda.
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By Carla M. Flink and Angel Luis Molina, Jr. | Strike up a conversation about politics with a friend, relative, or colleague, and you’d be hard pressed to surprise them by noting the increasing diversity in the demographic face of the United States. You might also argue that this population shift is important because it is changing the political landscape—the presence of demographic change in America is well noted by political pundits and casual observers alike. The American public now finds itself inundated with a flood of election media coverage and, almost inescapably, claims about how the electoral prospects of one candidate or another hinge upon the voting choices of historically underrepresented groups. On the governance side, these claims are important because many believe (or certainly hope) that some policymakers, be they aspiring or incumbent, are more likely to support policies that can improve the outcomes of which minorities care about the most.
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By Todd Swanstrom | Donald Trump ran against cities. During the campaign, he called inner cities “disasters,” implying that this was caused by flawed liberal policies. Trump’s negative portrayal of cities continued after the election. In his Inaugural Address he painted a bleak picture of “[m]others and children trapped in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape,” and he decried “the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives.”
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