Government | ModeShift

As We Build More, Use More, The Earth Is Pushing Back Hard

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 1, 2014June 18, 20142

PRAGUE — City Square erupted at the start of the 2014 New Year with a deafening and blazing midnight fusilade of rockets and cannon blasts. The air filled with spent gunpowder and smoke so dense the brilliance of the firebursts was obscured. The Czech crowds, so slim and young and dressed in chic leather and spiked heels, cheered with the joy and lusty charm that comes with political security and social success. This 1,000-year-old river …

At Yale, Peter Salovey’s Inauguration Heralds The Best of America

by Keith SchneiderOctober 15, 2013October 15, 20130

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The sound of trumpets and nearly 600 applauding guests greeted Peter Salovey and his wife, Marta Elisa Moret, as they arrived at the Yale University Commons on Saturday night for a sit-down celebratory dinner. The following afternoon Salovey, who is 55 years old and has spent his entire career at America’s third oldest university, was formally inaugurated as Yale’s 23rd president in a ceremony of music, oratory, and pageantry held at …

Government Shutdown, Default Reveal Fanaticism’s Depth

by Keith SchneiderOctober 10, 2013June 18, 20143

NEW YORK — This is the city and the new American experience that too many white suburban and rural voters loathe. Good leadership and smart taxpayer investments modernized the subways, scrubbed clean the shoreline, rebuilt Harlem, and turned Brooklyn into a multi-racial millennial hot spot for good jobs and housing. Crime is down, way down. City revenues are up. Voters here support an African American president, public education, gun control, gay marriage, the science of …

U.S. Government Shutdown Is A Tripwire — But For What?

by Keith SchneiderOctober 6, 2013June 18, 20143

Barack and Michelle Obama celebrate the president’s second inauguration on Pennsylvania Avenue on January 21, 2013. Photo/Keith Schneider For a time earlier in my career I founded and directed the Michigan Land Use Institute, an advocacy organization that is quite adept at winning important public interest campaigns. The Institute’s policy achievements were due in no small way to how consistently we adhered to our rules of engagement. Respect those who disagree with you. Don’t call …

Buffalo’s Comeback in the New York Times

by Keith SchneiderJuly 31, 2013July 31, 20131

BUFFALO â€“ In 2002, when he was recruited to help turn 120 acres of this cityâ€™s underperforming downtown into a jobs-producing, world-class campus for medical research, education, and clinical care, Matt Enstice was among a select few of the cityâ€™s young professionals who was convinced the idea wasnâ€™t a joke. Mr Enstice knows jokes. Prior to returning home and becoming the president and chief executive of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Inc., the non-profit group …

Election Day 2012 in Benzonia, Michigan

by Keith SchneiderNovember 6, 2012November 8, 20127

It takes a transcendant candidate — a Bill Clinton, a Ronald Reagan — to beat an incumbent president. Mitt Romney, who’s repudiated his signal achievements as a governor and shifted views as often as the game plan strategy required, certainly is not that. So I anticipate that Barack Obama will win a second term today, an honor that he has earned and deserves. Still, we are a dangerously immature country. How does a president govern …

Owensboro’s Downtown Development Plan in New York Times

by Keith SchneiderNovember 16, 2011February 3, 20146

The New York Times today published my article on Owensboro’s downtown development plan, much of it financed by a local tax increase enacted in 2009. Though the public spending has spurred new development and thousands of jobs in the last two years — Owensboro has generated 2,400 jobs in 2010 and 2011, more than any other Kentucky metro area — just two of the seven elected leaders who voted for it are still in office. …

A Civic Pact: Owensboro’s Next Development Strategy

by Keith SchneiderOctober 25, 2011November 5, 20143

The privilege to spend six months studying an American community is rare in journalism. Nevertheless that was the assignment from Citistates last spring. Immerse yourself in Owensboro, Kentucky and emerge with a clear sense of where the community is, and where it might consider going in the 21st century. Last week, in a series of public events, Citistates described the findings in What’s Done, What’s Next: A Civic Pact. The project found a number of …

On Beautiful Fall Day Central Lake Is Shuttered For Business

by Keith SchneiderOctober 8, 2011January 31, 20130

CENTRAL LAKE, MI – There is no sprawl in Central Lake, a northern village of 942 residents in magnificentÂ Antrim County. At this time of year rows of feed corn await harvest and the green white pine and multi-colored hardwood forests pour down the hillsides to the deep blue waters of the lake that gives the village its name. (see pix above and below) Central Lakes possesses an asset all-too rare in American communities – …

Manila On 9/11

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 10, 2011February 7, 20150

MANILA — The sun rose here to another towering and impressive Asian skyline. On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, while the world joins the United States in honoring a terrifying moment, I see skylines here and in China that describe in clear line and form just how far that day blasted us off course. One measure is the scant alterations in the skylines of big American cities in the last decade. Another is that in …