Urban Affairs

Across America, the movement to charter new public schools, even to contract schools and whole districts to private managers, is gaining ground fast.Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

Think famous love affairs: Romeo and Juliet. Scott and Zelda. Rush Limbaugh and himself. Roseanne and Tom. Then remember that the first couple ended up dead, the second divorced and depressed, the third rich but fat and alone, and as for the last, rumor has it they turned into hot air blimps in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and were last spotted drifting on the zephyrs above Paramus, N.J.So for perdurable, passionate, undisappointing relationships, you...

Washington. -- Could the best model to help bleeding urban neighborhoods be a 107-year-old prototype?Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

The Bush-Kemp enterprise-zone bill -- the administration's all-purpose cure for ailing inner cities -- is too much too late.Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

In the year of the detested and timid politician, Minnesota's Republican governor and Democratically controlled legislature have done something rather amazing.Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

St. Paul, Minnesota. -- Racked by recession and threatened by taxpayer revolt, states and cities have been slashing spending for education, infrastructure, social programs -- anything to stay fiscally afloat.Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

Seattle. - The nation's eyes will be on Washington state Tuesday as it votes on the toughest term-limit measure yet devised.Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

Washington -- After decades of pro-highway, anti-transit policies that skewer cities and waste energy, official Washington seems finally to have done something right.Neal R. Peirce writes a column on state and urban affairs.

Chicago. YOU CAN CALL him theoretician, evangelist or agitator. He grew up as a disciple of the late radical organizer Saul Alinsky, in the city that invented scrappy neighborhood organization. Some associates dub him ''the Buckminster Fuller of the neighborhood movement.''John L. McKnight, professor of urban affairs at Northwestern University, is America's lead proponent of the idea that bureaucratic social services are strangling neighborhoods and their people, exacerbating the very problems they're supposed to correct.