This book explores the challenges faced by America's start-up entrepreneurs and innovators. The author presents an action plan centered around a series of tax, regulatory, and other reforms designed to strengthen entrepreneurial businesses.
This report examines the unique challenges of smaller American legacy cities -- older industrial centers with populations of less than 200,000, located primarily in the Midwest and Northeast. These cities are critical sites for a number of global economic and demographic transformations, and must fundamentally reconsider how to rebuild and sustain strong economies, housing markets, and workforces. This report identifies replicable strategies that have assisted smaller legacy cities weather these transformations, find their competitive edge, and transform into thriving, sustainable communities.
In many American cities, middle and upper income people are moving into neighborhoods that had previously suffered disinvestment and decay. The new residents renovate housing, stimulate business, and contribute to the tax base. These benefits of neighborhood revitalization are, in some cases, achieved at a potentially serious cost: the displacement of existing neighborhood residents by eviction, condominium conversion, or as a result of rent increases. Revitalizing Americas Cities investigates the reasons why the affluent move into revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods and the ways in which the new residents benefit the city. It also examines the resulting displaced households. Data are presented on displacement in nine revitalizing neighborhoods of five cities the most comprehensive survey of displaced households conducted to date. The study reveals characteristics of displaced households and hardships encountered as a result of being forced from their homes. Also featured is an examination of federal, state, and local policies toward neighborhood reinvestment and displacement, including various alternative approaches for dealing with this issue.
This study offers a way to think about the regeneration of America's legacy cities -- older industrial cities that have experienced sustained job and population loss over the past few decades. It argues that regeneration is grounded in the cities' abilities to find new forms. These include not only new physical forms that reflect the changing economy and social fabric, but also new forms of export-oriented economic activity, new models of governance and leadership, and new ways to build stronger regional and metropolitan relationships. The report also identifies the powerful obstacles that stand in the way of fundamental change, and suggests directions by which cities can overcome those obstacles and embark on the path of regeneration.
In many American cities, middle and upper income people are moving into neighborhoods that had previously suffered disinvestment and decay. The new residents renovate housing, stimulate business, and contribute to the tax base. These benefits of neighborhood revitalization are, in some cases, achieved at a potentially serious cost: the displacement of existing neighborhood residents by eviction, condominium conversion, or as a result of rent increases. Revitalizing America's Cities investigates the reasons why the affluent move into revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods and the ways in which the new residents benefit the city. It also examines the resulting displaced households. Data are presented on displacement in nine revitalizing neighborhoods of five cities — the most comprehensive survey of displaced households conducted to date. The study reveals characteristics of displaced households and hardships encountered as a result of being forced from their homes. Also featured is an examination of federal, state, and local policies toward neighborhood reinvestment and displacement, including various alternative approaches for dealing with this issue.
Focusing on the Americas – home to 40 to 50 million Indigenous people – this book explores the history and current state of Indigenous language revitalization across this vast region. Complementary chapters on the USA and Canada, and Latin America and the Caribbean, offer a panoramic view while tracing nuanced trajectories of "top down" (official) and "bottom up" (grass roots) language planning and policy initiatives. Authored by leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, the book is organized around seven overarching themes: Policy and Politics; Processes of Language Shift and Revitalization; The Home-School-Community Interface; Local and Global Perspectives; Linguistic Human Rights; Revitalization Programs and Impacts; New Domains for Indigenous Languages Providing a comprehensive, hemisphere-wide scholarly and practical source, this singular collection simultaneously fills a gap in the language revitalization literature and contributes to Indigenous language revitalization efforts.
Robert Wuthnow shows how music and art are revitalizing churches and religious life across the nation in this first-ever consideration of the relationship between religion and the arts. All in Sync draws on more than four hundred in-depth interviews with church members, clergy, and directors of leading arts organizations and a new national survey to document a strong positive relationship between participation in the arts and interest in spiritual growth. Wuthnow argues that contemporary spirituality is increasingly encouraged by the arts because of its emphasis on transcendent experience and personal reflection. This kind of spirituality, contrary to what many observers have imagined, is compatible with active involvement in churches and serious devotion to Christian practices. The absorbing narrative relates the story of a woman who overcame a severe personal crisis and went on to head a spiritual direction center where participants use the arts to gain clarity about their own spiritual journeys. Readers visit contemporary worship services in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston and listen to leaders and participants explain how music and art have contributed to the success of these services. All in Sync also illustrates how music and art are integral parts of some Episcopal, African American, and Orthodox worship services, and how people of faith are using their artistic talents to serve others. Besides examining the role of the arts in personal spirituality and in congregational life, Wuthnow discusses how clergy and lay leaders are rethinking the role of the imagination, especially in connection with traditional theological virtues. He also shows how churches and arts organizations sometimes find themselves at odds over controversial moral questions and competing claims about spirituality. Accessible, relevant, and innovative, this book is essential for anyone searching for a better understanding of the dynamic relationships among religion, spirituality, and American culture.
It has become axiomatic to contend that U.S. foreign policy must adapt to an era of renewed “great-power competition.” The United States went on a quarter-century strategic detour after the Cold War, the argument goes, basking in triumphalism and getting bogged down in the Middle East. Now China and Russia are increasingly challenging its influence and undercutting the order it has led since 1945. How should it respond to these two formidable authoritarian powers? In this timely intervention, Ali Wyne offers the first detailed critique of great-power competition as a foreign policy framework, warning that it could render the United States defensive and reactive. He exhorts Washington to find a middle ground between complacence and consternation, selectively contesting Beijing and Moscow but not allowing their decisions to determine its own course. Analyzing a resurgent China, a disruptive Russia, and a deepening Sino-Russian entente, Wyne explains how the United States can seize the "great-power opportunity" at hand: to manage all three of those phenomena confidently while renewing itself at home and abroad.