What is science’s rightful place? How should we govern technology?
America’s neighborhoods were once beautiful, unique, dense, and scaled for a communal life on foot. But obscure federal rules piling up over a century have made it nearly impossible for banks to finance new ones.
The planners dreamed of gleaming cities. Instead they brought three generations of hollowed-out downtowns and flight to the suburbs.
Our ancestors built grand public systems to conquer hunger, thirst, darkness, and squalor. That progress can be lost if we forget it.
If you think the power system must run itself by now, you’re wrong. Behind every nicely toasted bagel is a vast network of generators, transformers, computers, wires — and, yes, people in backrooms sweating to make sure the juice flows exactly where, and when, it needs to go. What could possibly go wrong?
U.S. housing policy claims to promote homeownership. Instead, it encourages high prices, sprawl, and NIMBYism.
There is so little fresh surface water on Earth that if you collected it all into a ball, it would barely reach across New York City. Running water is a miracle — but the technology that brings it to us and takes the waste away is actually thousands of years old. The only barrier to staying hydrated today is political will.
The traditional selling point of the suburbs: they’re nature preserves for Living, set apart from the real world. What if we made them little fiefdoms instead?
