Who’s on the Ballot in Cities?
by Jenny Fogarty on March 5, 2008 in All Politics is Local: An Urban Policy Blog
Tomorrow we’ll be celebrating International Women’s Day at HKS with a focus on the theme of Women Who Inspire all around the world. It struck me however, that right here in the US women make up only about 16% of our cities’ mayors. That means that - of the US cities with over 30,000 population - there are 960 male mayors and only 185 female mayors. (Our very own Cambridge is one of the 185.)
The Winter 2008 issue of the Harvard Political Review included a great collection of eight articles on mayors. Of the 10 US mayors they mentioned by name in the issue, zero of them were women. Perhaps it was because there were so few to choose from.
Why is this the case? Read more
Cities Behind Bars
by Jenny Fogarty on March 3, 2008 in All Politics is Local: An Urban Policy Blog
A recent study from the Pew Center on the States sheds light on a topic that is too often hidden from our usual policy-wonk conversations: the fact that more than one in 100 US adults is behind bars. Specifically, Thursday’s New York Times points out that one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, as well as one in 15 black adults and one in 36 Hispanic adults, based on Justice Department figures for 2006.
These statistics are staggering. Read more
History Makes a Comeback
by Jenny Fogarty on February 24, 2008 in All Politics is Local: An Urban Policy Blog, Blog
Somehow Friday’s snowstorm did not stop my class from taking a bus tour of North Central Massachusetts’ industrial cities. From our huge coach bus we saw small – but tough – cities that have weathered so much through the years. Built up as major industrial and manufacturing centers in the past, they now grasp onto their last hopes as the service sector engulfs the economy and globalization heightens competition.
Yet as I looked out the window I was struck by a recurrent symbol that these cities are still standing tall and strong, and they’re not going anywhere: the old mills. These huge brick buildings were originally built to take advantage of the water power on the Nashua River to support the plastics, paper, or furniture industries. The trademark of a growing economy and the lifeblood of these cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, they have an almost untouchable, austere quality even today. Having grown old and obsolete, though, most of them stand empty. They remain looming over the towns as a symbol of what was… and what could be. Read more
