Maine's governor wants the state carbon-neutral by 2045. What will that take?

At the United Nations, Governor Janet Mills pledged to make Maine carbon-neutral by 2045, tasking the new Maine Climate Council to come up with a plan to do so via an executive order.

So what does being "carbon neutral" mean, and what would Maine likely have to do to achieve such a status -- something no other state and only one foreign country has thus far achieved? I explored this in the current edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram, which published last Sunday.

In short: Bhutan, the only country that's already carbon-neutral, is 71% forested and has about 50 people per square mile. Maine is 90% forested and has just over 40 per square mile -- a carbon sink with not that many people and a huge structural advantage right out of the starting block. It's still going to require massive changes in how energy is produced and the types of vehicles and heating devices we use to consume it. Details in the story.

Maine: LePage administration threatens Wiscasset on traffic project, town says

In yesterday's Portland Press Herald, I have an update on the increasingly fraught struggle between Maine Gov. Paul LePage's Department of Transportation and the town of Wiscasset, site of Maine's most infamous summer traffic bottleneck.

To recap, the town originally supported the plan, but turned against it and ultimately filed suit against the DOT, alleging that it is violating town ordinances and state law and that it changed the project after receiving approval. Among other things, the DOT suddenly decided not to use federal funds, which were to pay for 80 percent of the project's $5 million price tag, thereby avoiding historic preservation requirements. LePage then personally started throwing fuel on the fire with blustery notes to constituents telling them he's had enough of Wiscasset's obstruction, then allegedly vetoing a draft compromise worked out between the department and town.

Now the department has allegedly told the town they might go ahead with their project -- which includes removing all on-street parking on Main Street in the historic village -- without building replacement parking (as the plan has called for all along) if they are made to follow local ordinances. It's the nuclear option, so to speak, and one local businesspeople say would kill the historic downtown. Details within.

Maine: state plan to mitigate the infamous Wiscasset traffic bottleneck turns acrimonious

The state has a plan to mitigate Maine's most infamous summer traffic bottleneck, the one in the historic village of Wiscasset, where US Route 1 passes down Main Street to and from the only bridge for miles that crosses the Sheepscot River, linking the Boothbay and Bristol peninsulas with points South.

It's not going well.

As you can read in my story in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, the town is now opposed to the project and is suing the Maine Department of Transportation to stop it, alleging that it is violating town ordinances and state law and that it changed the project after receiving approval. Among other things, the DOT suddenly decided not to use federal funds, which were to pay for 80 percent of the project's $5 million price tag, thereby avoiding historic preservation requirements. And Gov. Paul LePage threw fuel on the fire with blustery notes to constituents telling them he's had enough of Wiscasset's obstruction and wishes he could put a viaduct right through the center of the village, carrying traffic up and over to the bridge as it does in Bath. And local businesses fear it will destroy the village.

But others support the project, including the select boards of neighboring towns and some business people, who believe the project will revitalize Main Street, not destroy it.

Read on for details.

How ruby red Utah became the nation's land use planning leader

Guess where the most ambitious and successful long-range land use planning effort in the U.S. has taken place, one that included the building of an expansive regional commuter and light rail system and has been expanded to cover an entire state?

If you guessed Vermont or Oregon, you'll be surprised to learn its Utah, and my latest piece for POLITICO Magazine's What Works series is on how and why they did it. There's lessons in it for cities and states everywhere, including very conservative ones.

The Deseret News, the statewide Salt Lake City daily owned by the LDS Church, picked up on the piece today with this nice summary, which I appreciate given the church itself declined to participate in the story.

This is my eleventh full-length "What Works" piece over the past year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base;  how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future; how Roanoke, Virginia went from a train city to a brain city;  how Winston-Salem, North Carolina pivoted from tobacco manufacturing to high-tech innovation and how Burlington, Vermont -- Bernie Sanders' hometown -- became the country's first all-renewable-powered city; and how Albuquerque, New Mexico took on homelessness (under a Republican mayor, no less.) In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

After twelve crazed months, I'll be taking a hiatus from piloting the What Works series to catch up on other projects, but expect more as the year progresses.

End of the year round-up on POLITICO cities project

2016 is thankfully about to end, though I suspect we will long for it by the second quarter of next year. In parting, a quick round-up of items related to my series on successful innovations in American cities for POLITICO Magazine.

The Vermont "hack": Burlington Electric, the city-owned utility in Vermont's largest city, is in the news today because they discovered malevolent Russian state "hacker" code on one of their computers. I profiled the utility last month for the series.

Roanoke Times editorial: thanks to Roanoke, Virginia's newspaper of record for this editorial discussing how to move cities forward, with special focus on my POLITICO article on that city, and the work of The Atlantic's James Fallows. Much appreciated.

Bloomberg View on homelessness: Syndicated columnist Noah Smith took up the issue of work and

 homelessness this week, citing my most recent piece for the series on Albuquerque. The column was carried across the country, including at Maine's Bangor Daily News.

And, separately, thanks to columnists at the Herald Dispatch in Huntington, West Virginia and the Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho for taking up American Nations this month. Much appreciated.

Happy New Year, everyone. Let's hope it outperforms expectations.

As Trump Age dawns, a dispatch from the city Sanders built

At Politico Magazine, the subjects for the What Works series are picked months in advance, so it's by coincidence that, days after Donald Trump's upset victory in the U.S. presidential election, the series visit Bernie Sanders' hometown. I did field research for this story a couple weeks before election day; now it reads like a dispatch from an alternate universe, where a town with few meaningful fissures is creating a sustainable economy under the guidance of their municipal government, itself run for much of the past four decades by social democrats.

In any case, the new story is on Burlington, Vermont's 37-year drive to build a sustainable city, protected from international fossil fuel markets and the whims of distant corporate boards. The result: the first city able to power itself entirely from renewable energy -- it owns its own grid and generating capacity and could theoretically cut itself off from the outside world without interrupting power -- and one that is now working to become net zero in transportation and thermal energy use as well. It also grows a lot of its own food.

This is my ninth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base;  how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future; how Roanoke, Virginia went from a train city to a brain city; and how Winston-Salem, North Carolina pivoted from tobacco manufacturing to high-tech innovation. In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

Where's next? Hint: They filmed Breaking Bad there.

From U.S. cities, some lessons in protecting liberal democracy

This year's presidential election has exposed a long festering crisis: that tens of millions of Americans are ready to endorse a candidate who has pledged to use extra-constitutional means to solve the country’s problems, including the jailing of his opponent, an erosion of first amendment protections for the press, and ethnographic tests for federal judges.

Authoritarianism now has a sizable constituency in American politics, one that won’t be going away on Nov. 9, regardless of who is president-elect. The next president and congressional leaders will still preside over a country that is politically polarized, with differences that are geographic even as they are ideological, but the risks of inaction have grown.

In the new weekly print edition of my old journalistic home, The Christian Science Monitor, I have

the cover story on how we move forward and shore up our liberal democracy. This is the topic of my most recent book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, but it's been reinforced by what I've seen on the ground as I've travelled the country this year for POLITICO, observing successful innovations of various sorts in cities from Utah to New Hampshire.

The story -- which appears in the print edition dated Nov. 7, but went up online yesterday -- explores how people can balance the individual freedom and the need to build and maintain the social and physical infrastructure that allows it to exist.

It's been a few years since I last wrote for the Monitor, but I'm a past Eastern Europe, Balkan, and Global Affairs correspondent for that paper, having written hundreds of stories from dozens of countries between the early 1990s and 2010 from bases in Budapest, Zagreb, Washington, South Texas and Maine. It's nice to be back in its pages again after a long hiatus.

[Update, 12/31/16: This story prompted editorials in both the Des Moines Register and the Roanoke Times.]

How Roanoke went from Train City to Brain City

My latest installment for POLITICO Magazine's "What Works" series is on the remarkable and entirely homegrown transformation of Roanoke, Virginia, which has been getting a lot of attention this week. Here's a snippet:

How did a small city in a disadvantaged region four hours from a major metropolis—one that had seen its signature industries atrophy or depart, that lacked so much as a branch campus of a state university—transform itself from the forgotten stepsister of the Appalachians into a formidable rival to Asheville, North Carolina? The answer has lessons for small, out-of-the-way cities everywhere: Roanoke’s people did it largely by themselves, in small steps and with an eye to assets and alliances in the wider region around them. 

Roanoke, at least, has embraced the story. Today's editorial in the Roanoke Times praised the story for not patronizing the city, which I gather has been a problem with national media treatments in the recent past. "Sometimes we're too close to things to fully appreciate them," the Times writes. "The Politico story does an excellent job piecing together how Roanoke has turned itself around."

And, in a first for the "What Works" series, there was this produced news segment on the story from
one of the local television stations, NBC affiliate WSLS. Thanks, Roanokers, for the endorsements.

This is my seventh full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base; and how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future. In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

How Philadelphia transformed an abandoned naval base

How did Philadelphia successfully transform a 1200-acre former naval base into a mixed-use district that some are calling a second Center City? That's the topic of my latest installment of Politico's "What Works" series on successful urban innovations. Twenty-one years after it closed, the former Philadelphia Navy Yard complex -- which once included the largest naval shipyard on the planet, a naval seaplane factory, a naval air station, and, in 1944, a top secret Manhattan Project lab -- is now a hive of commercial, industrial, recreational, and academic activity, and the next phase intends to bring residential as well.

Attending the Democratic National Convention this coming week? The convention site is not a mile away from the Navy Yard gates.

This is my fifth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; and on how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood." In addition, last week -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

How Cleveland renewed its outdoor civic spaces ahead of the RNC

My latest installment for Politico's "What Works" series on successful urban innovations is a mini-story from Cleveland, Ohio, where a public-private partnership has aimed to renew and reconnect the city's outdoor public spaces, especially Public Square, the one-time New England-style public common at the heart of the city

Cleveland, where the Republican National Convention is about to open, has an incredible legacy in this regard, having been the location of the greatest manifestation of "City Beautiful" era planning outside of Washington, DC. The current investments key off the 1903 Group Plan, developed by a team led by Daniel Burnham (of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair "White City" fame) and modeled on Paris's Place de la Concorde.

Thanks to KCRW, the NPR affiliate in Santa Monica, California, for their interest in the piece. My
interview with their show "dna: Design and Architecture" airs Tuesday. [Update, 7/21/16: here's the interview.]

In addition to this article, I've written four full-length "What Works" pieces this year: on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; and on how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood."

How Cincinnati transformed the "nation's most dangerous neighborhood"

My latest installment for Politico's "What Works" series on successful urban innovations is on how Cincinnati, Ohio transformed Over-the-Rhine -- a neighborhood that in 2009 was declared the nation's most dangerous -- into perhaps the most happening and sought after place in the city, and did so in the proverbial blink of an eye.

The controversial bit, as you'll read, is that the city accomplished this by outsourcing the problem to the corporate community, which funded and govern a private non-profit tasked with executing the neighborhood's rescue. That they've succeeded in turning the neighborhood around is undeniable and an extremely impressive feat. But have they avoided simply gentrifying Over-the-Rhine? Long-time residents aren't so sure.

Don't miss Mark Peterson's brilliant photo essay from Over-the-Rhine as well.

Thanks to Cincinnati's ABC affiliate, WCPO, for featuring the story on their Friday news cast, and to NBC affiliate WLWT for plugging it earlier that morning.

This is my fourth "What Works" piece as a POLITICO Magazine contributing editor. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; and how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected.

Where am I off to next? Hint: lots of mothballed ships.

Lessons from Denver's transit triumph

My latest installment for POLITICO Magazine's "What Works" series posted last night, and it's on Denver's ambitious, nearly-completed effort to build a region-wide rail transit system in what has been a fast growing, auto-dependent city.

Denver did a number of remarkable things to make it happen: foster cooperation across a vast metropolitan region, convince a skeptical public to increase taxes to build it, and when budget and expense forecasts collapsed in the face of the 2007-2008 financial collapse, create the nation's first large-scale transit public-private partnership to get much of the system built.

But the biggest lesson learned: the greatest benefit of the system isn't relieving traffic congestion, it's the revolution in land use the stations and lines catalyze. Denver had to discover this along the way, but other cities contemplating major expansions can take advantage of what they learned.

Thanks to Colorado Public Radio's "Colorado Matters" for having me on the program yesterday, hours before the piece was even published. You can hear the interview online here.

This is my third "What Works" piece as a POLITICO Magazine contributing editor. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool and how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold. Where am I off to next? Hint: it's where Greater Appalachia once spread over "the Rhine."

Talking with WNHN's Arnie Arnesen about Manchester's Millyard renaissance

I had an enjoyable conversation about my Politico Magazine piece on Manchester with Arnie Arnesen, former Democratic gubernatorial and congressional nominee from New Hampshire, who hosts "The Attitude," a politics interview show on Concord's WNHN that's syndicated nationwide via the Pacifica Radio Network.

That interview -- about how New Hampshire's largest city turned a massive, largely vacant 19th century brick industrial complex into a 21st century knowledge industry hive -- can be heard today at noon in the Concord area, at various Pacifica affiliates from Vermont to Hawaii this week, or via podcast download right now.

We also chatted a bit about Des Moines, the subject of my previous "What Works" series installment for Politico Magazine, where I'm a contributing editor.

"The Attitude" can be heard this week on stations including KPFT (Houston), KNSJ (San Diego), KAKU (Maui) and KHOI (Ames, Iowa). Check your local Pacifica affiliate for listings.

How Manchester, New Hampshire, got its old mills spinning 21st century gold

My latest installment for Politico Magazine's "What Works" series is out and explores how a northern New England city turned a massive, nearly vacant 19th century mill complex into a 21st century knowledge industry powerhouse.

Manchester, New Hampshire -- a planned Utopian industrial city -- was home to the world's largest textile factory, a nearly 7 million foot red brick complex that by the mid-1960s was largely abandoned. But by accepting the fact that the old manufacturing industries weren't coming back -- and the arrival of a "world famous inventor colorful enough to have invited comparisons to Thomas Edison, Willy Wonka and Dr. No" -- the once moribund city has cultivated a high tech cluster in its old millyard.

Hunter S. Thompson had some choice words for the Union-Leader to kick off the piece, but that didn't stop that paper from giving the story some nice coverage this weekend.

This is my second piece as a Politico contributing editor. My first: this widely circulated story on how Des Moines went from dull to cool.

[Update, 1/25/16: talked with WNHN's Arnie Arnesen about the story on her syndicated Pacifica Radio show.]

How's a city boost its reputation? A case study from Des Moines

This weekend, the Des Moines Register published a long read exploring how the city's boosters succeeded in changing the national media narrative on their once-boring, now-cooler city, which my piece for Politico played a role in. It's likely of interest to anyone charged with urban "branding".

Reporter Matthew Morian talked to Matt Lauer, Al Roker, and myself. The takeaway -- aside from my contribution that Iowa, unlike say, Maine, hasn't had to wage an unproductive post-colonial cultural struggle with its a former hegemon -- is that a place wins the PR battle when its people actually believe and have internalized the message the official boosters are trying to get out there.

The caucuses have passed, but if you're curious to know more about Iowa and how its cultural history and geography effect its political behavior, try this piece as well.

Meanwhile, on to New Hampshire.

How "dull" Des Moines got its groove

I'll be writing a bunch about urban innovations in U.S. cities for Politico this year as I help spearhead their What Works series. My first effort -- on how Des Moines, Iowa transformed itself from dull to cool -- posted Friday. Short answer: it took a generation, a lot of cooperation and a long-term vision, and the execution was more akin to setting up the conditions for a chemical reaction than working one's way through a checklist.

I'm humbled at all the attention for the piece: 30,000 Facebook shares in the first 24 hours, media coverage in Iowa, and even this Des Moines Register article on its "takeaways."

Whats next month's installment? Hint: it's Manchester, New Hampshire. (Yes, there's a certain geographic pattern to be detected here.)

Oddly enough, my last piece for Politico was also from Iowa, on what makes that state tick. It's something of a companion piece to the Des Moines article, as it explains the Midland ethos (as per American Nations) that's at the root of the Iowa advantage: an almost uncanny ability to cooperate, undercutting the need for strong government steering.