Questions for Albany’s Next Mayor

During the Albany 2030 planning process, one of the things that came across loud and clear in the initial public meetings, but didn’t make it into the plan, was that the people of Albany wanted development going forward to maintain a focus on benefitting existing residents and businesses, alongside becoming attractive to those looking to move to a more urban environment. Places from Jersey City to Austin have suffered when new growth left behind much of the city’s original population. How will Albany grow in a way that brings everyone along?

In Sorted Out Cities, Who Belongs?

Many years ago when I was on staff at Metroland covering the ongoing story surrounding office Chris D’Alessandro’s suspension and the efforts of a little innovative community prosecution office headed up by Assistant DA David Soares, who of course went on to challenge his boss in the race for DA, I spent a decent amount of lot of time walking the streets of Arbor Hill and Sheridan Hollow. When I walked home from such an assignment across the city, especially as I approached and crossed neighborhood boundaries along the way, I always had the feeling I was stitching together in my head a picture of my city that was too easily and constantly fragmented by the ways we usually move through it.

On Protesting Killer Coal

The cooling towers were the first thing we saw, clearly visible from the Little League field in Somerset, Mass., where I had joined several hundred people to call for the closing of Brayton Point Power Plant, one of the largest remaining coal-fired plants in the Northeast, and the only one in Massachusetts not already scheduled to go off line.