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“Keeping the cost of borrowed money a bit lower for one more year won’t cure the rising cost of higher education. It’s not even a bandage. It’s more like giving some comforting words to a critically injured patient. It might make a few people feel better, or win some votes, but it won’t do much to help our problems."
From Lapham's Quarterly, a special issue on The City. From City Journal, Victor Davis Hanson on the destiny of cities: Throughout history, forces both natural and human have made cities rise and fall; Asian megacities, free and unfree: How politics has shaped the growth of Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul; and Brandon Fuller and Paul Romer on cities from scratch and a new path for development. From THES, a review of The Just City by Susan S. Fainstein; and a review of City Life by Adrian Franklin. There is a growing understanding that it is actually “love” that will be the prime force in the future economy of successful 21st century cities. The 30 most dynamic cities on Earth: Which metropolis is leading the world out of the recession? The answer is Istanbul — and the rest of the list is equally surprising. Mario Polese on seven reasons why big cities matter more than ever. Ross Perlin on ten megacities of the near future. What makes a city grow and thrive, and what causes it to stagnate and fall? Geoffrey West thinks the tools of physics can give us the answers. Tom Vanderbilt on how a planned highway can change a city, even if it never gets built. A new era for the city-state: Joel Kotkin on the New World Order. An article on predicting the climate-changed city of the future. An innovator in every apartment: Conor Friedersdorf on how cities should unravel their pre-digital regulations.
... time enough tomorrow (or whenever the rest of the convention post-mortems roll in) to blog collected observations and links.
Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Georgy Egorov (Northwestern), and Konstantin Sonin (CEPR): A Political Theory of Populism. Mathias O. Royce (SMC): The Rise and Propagation of Political Right-Wing Extremism: The Identification and Assessment of Common Sovereign Economic and Socio-Demographic Determinants. From Edge, who gets to keep secrets? The question of secrecy in the information age is clearly a deep social (and mathematical) problem, and well worth paying attention to. Kathryn Schulz on 2010: The year in mistakes. Five years in, gauging impact of Gates grants. Putting the "American business model" in its place: The key to understanding why market economies have outperformed planned societies is not recognition of the ubiquity of greed, but understanding of the power of disciplined pluralism. A review of The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives by Gilbert Achcar. Cartoonist Darryl Cunningham investigates climate change. The deep pain of awkward silences: Remarks that stop the conversation cold at social gatherings can instantly elicit deep-seated feelings of exclusion. From NYRB, Ahmed Rashid on the way out of Afghanistan. The American Wikileaks Hacker: Jacob Appelbaum fight repressive regimes around the world — including his own. Rachel Botsman says we're "wired to share" — and shows how websites like Zipcar and Swaptree are changing the rules of human behavior.Denis Dutton, the author, philosopher, and founding editor of the pioneering web digest Arts & Letters Daily, is dead at age 66.
