by Gregory Rodriguez
Eight years ago, after former California Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg was knocked out of the L.A. mayor's race in the primary, urban critic Joel Kotkin and political consultant Arnie Steinberg bravely predicted that the chances of a Jew ever being elected to the mayoralty had been greatly diminished. ...
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Upcoming
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January 29, 2013, 6:30pm
Bill Streever: Why Do We Love Hot Places?
»We’re worried about global warming, yet no one in the Northeast complains when it’s 70 degrees in February—and people are still moving to Arizona for the dry heat. But even as we take our Christmas vacations in the Caribbean and buy second homes in the desert, we don’t really know what it is we’re chasing after.
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February 11, 2013, 6:30pm
How Do We Rebuild Neighborhoods After Foreclosures?
»While the foreclosure crisis is starting to ease across Arizona and the country, neighborhoods still must reckon with the damage. Homes that once were owner-occupied are now owned by outside investors who rent them out. Homeowners who managed to stay in their homes lack resources. And neighbors who were the glue of some communities are gone. The result: neighborhoods have lost not only wealth but also have suffered declines in the quality of their built environment and in the social connections that made them work. While policy and fiscal assistance has focused on helping homeowners, the health of the neighborhoods has been neglected. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis economist William R. Emmons, Arizona State University geographer Deirdre Pfeiffer, and Mortgage Resolution Partners chairman Steven Gluckstern visit Zócalo to discuss specific proposals for rebuilding neighborhoods—and the social connections that made them work.
Moderated by Fernanda Santos, Phoenix Bureau Chief, The New York Times
DETAILS: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/event/how-do-we-rebuild-neighborhoods-after-foreclosures/
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Featured Articles
For the past year, photographer Chad Ress, a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University, has been crisscrossing the United States to capture in photographs how Americans gather today. His work has taken him to Florida, the Dakotas, Kentucky, California, and many other places east, west, north, and south.
»by Gregory Rodriguez
Give Karl Rove a break. His meltdown on election night may not have been entirely about Fox News prematurely calling Ohio for President Barack Obama. After all, the poor guy had every right to get upset while watching the Republican Party nominee’s campaign crash and burn. ...
» by Eric Liu
Are we citizens of the world?
In recent years, an unlikely collection of lefty environmentalists, Internet libertarians, multicultural educators, and voracious capitalists has coalesced around the idea that nations don't really matter anymore - that all we need is state-free citizenship of the globe. It's a powerful vision. It has in its favor much evidence and many trends. And it is a mirage. ...
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Mission
The Center for Social Cohesion, a project of Arizona State University in partnership with the New America Foundation, is dedicated to studying the forces that shape our sense of social unity.
Wholly non-partisan, pluralistic and multidisciplinary in outlook, the Center for Social Cohesion seeks to promote understanding of how diverse societies cohere. Globalization, immigration and the fragmentation of media have increased the urgency of questions surrounding national identity, citizenship, political discourse and the fraying social contract. It’s time to devise new strategies and public policies to foster healthy civic engagement locally, encourage robust integration nationally and explore the meaning of citizenship and community globally.
To that end, the Center for Social Cohesion fosters discourse and supports research on the ever-shifting balance between the pluribus and the unum in American society.
