Afterword

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Julia E. Rusk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Report Card ◽  
City Government ◽  
The People ◽  
Wellbeing Index ◽  
Santa Monica ◽  
The City

This afterword presents a vision for well-being policies and actions in the United States, focusing on the experience of the City of Santa Monica, California. The purpose of data is to put it into action. The goal in Santa Monica is to make this a reality, with benefits accruing regularly to every resident, neighborhood, business, and contributor to the community. This was the idea behind Santa Monica’s local Wellbeing Index: harnessing the power of data for the commonwealth that would reveal the story of the people and the community in new ways, and that would help to transform city government. The goal of the Wellbeing Index was to expand the measures of a community far beyond the traditional and economically-focused gross domestic product (GDP). Going forward, the Wellbeing Index will be the tool used to evaluate whether policies, programs, and other City investments are in fact improving community well-being. The chapter also looks at Santa Monica’s programs, such as the Youth Wellbeing Report Card and the Pico Wellbeing Project.

Invisible Hand or Ecological Footprint? Comparing Social Versus Environmental Impacts of Recent Economic Growth

2019 ◽  
pp. 108602661988511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory M. Mikkelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Ecological Footprint ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Key Indicators

This study examines changes in some key indicators among 66 countries on six continents over a 56-year period, to compare the power of economic growth to improve human health and income distribution with its tendency to degrade the natural environment. The results indicate that growth depletes and pollutes nature far more than it benefits society. This suggests that public policy should shift toward enhancement of individual and social well-being in ways more direct and effective, and less ecologically damaging, than reliance on overall growth in gross domestic product. I illustrate this implication with a degrowth scenario for the United States to 2050 that draws on the empirical results for the period 1961 to 2016. And I consider certain reforms in the management and governance of organizations to implement such a scenario.

American Democracy Reconsidered: Part I

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
The State ◽  
City Government ◽  
State Governments ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One

In his celebrated study of American democracy written in 1888, Lord Bryce reserved his most condemnatory reflections for city government and in a muchquoted passage asserted: ‘There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the National government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption and mismanagement which mark the administration of most of the great cities'sangeetha.

American Tables of Mortality

1870 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. F. McCay
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Good ◽  
Rural Districts ◽  
The People ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Long Life ◽  
The City ◽  
Country People

When our mutual life companies began their business in 1843, they had no American table of mortality to guide them in determining the premiums of insurance that ought to be charged at the different periods of life. There were no American statistics public or private, good, bad, or indifferent, to which they could refer, except the mortuary reports of cities, and these were so imperfect and unreliable as to be utterly useless, except to encourage the opinion that the chances of long life were about the same here as in the countries from which our people had emigrated. It was known that the numbers of the dying, as reported by our city registers, were below the real deaths; that the ages were full of errors; that the boundaries of the mortuary limits were constantly changing; that residents of the city were often buried in the country, and sometimes country people were interred in town; that the population was fluctuating; that the immigration from the rural districts and from foreign countries was large and irregular; that the census of the population, whether taken by the United States, or by the states, or by the cities themselves, was full of errors; that the ages of the living, both among males and females, were wrongly reported, sometimes intentionally, but always carelessly and thoughtlessly; and that these errors in the numbers and ages of the people and of the deaths were so numerous that no confidence could be placed in the ratio of the living and the dying at any particular age, while this ratio at all ages is an indispensable element in determining the proper premiums to be charged in any of the contracts made by our life companies.

“The Transparency of Democracy”: The Production of Washington’s Nationals Park as a Late Capitalist Space

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
City Government ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
The Us ◽  
Baseball Team ◽  
The City

Following the trend of cities throughout the United States subsidizing new baseball stadiums within their economic redevelopment strategies, in 2005, the city government of Washington, D.C. agreed to subsidize the construction of Nationals Park for the use of the Washington Nationals baseball team. In its design of the stadium, HOK Sport architects sought to represent the “transparency of democracy” as they were inspired by the democratic image and iconography of the US Capital city. Using a perspective based in Lefebvre’s (1991b) production of space, I explore the power relations produced and reproduced within spatial and cultural production. I argue that instead of creating an inclusive space, architects designed a space that exemplifies the late capitalist moment in its focus on consumption, social control, and aesthetic production. Nationals Park, thus, excludes people by class, privileges visitors over residents, and provides an unrealistic view of the city that marginalizes less powerful groups.

scholarly journals The Battle of Stalingrad in the Context of Modern History

2013 ◽  
pp. 22-28
Author(s):  
M. Y. Myagkov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The People ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
The City

Proceeding 200 days and nights the Battle of Stalingrad became a turning point in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people and in all World War II, it turned back, in the western direction movement of the Soviet-German front when Hitler was compelled to recognize that for Germans "possibility of the end of war in the east by means of approach more doesn't exist". After Stalingrad it became clear to the whole world that war against the USSR for a coalition of fascist aggressors is lost. Defeat near Stalingrad allied Germany of armies cracked the fascist block, having forced Italy, Romania, Hungary and Finland actively to look for contacts with the countries of an anti-Hitleriwste coalition for the purpose of a withdrawal from a war. The developed events put an end to calculations on the introduction in war against the USSR to Turkey and Japan, were decisive incentive of growth of a resistance movement in Europe and Asia. The western allies of the USSR intensified preparation for opening of the second anti-Hitlerite front in Europe. U.S. President F.Ruzvelt called battle near Stalingrad epic. Later it sent the diploma of the following contents: "On behalf of the people of the United States of America I hand over this diploma to the city of Stalingrad to note our admiration of his valorous defenders … Their nice victory stopped a wave of invasion and became a turning point of war of the allied nations against aggression forces".

scholarly journals "Leave the Fads to the Yankees"

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-84
Author(s):  
Patricia Petersen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
The United States ◽  
City Government ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
City Manager ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City

Does the border between the United States and Canada make a difference? To a political scientist it does for the obvious reason: the border defines two different political entities with different forms of government, different political customs and conventions. Two attempts in the first thirty years of the twentieth century to change the structure of the government of the City of Toronto illustrate the difference the border can make. The two proposals, commission government and city manager government, had originated with municipal reformers in the United States during the Progressive Era. The main idea behind both plans was to concentrate the executive and legislative authority in one governing unit. Commission and city manager government, however, attracted only a few supporters in the City despite their extreme popularity in the United States. City government in Toronto was not considered as bad as the government in those cities in the United States that had changed to new forms. Moreover, the proposals were American innovations and Toronto politicians were wary of American fads, especially ones like these which were drawn "from the uncertain spheres of political theory."

City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Erikson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Of Poverty ◽  
Inner Cities ◽  
The People ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The City ◽  
Ways Of Life

This chapter examines the ways of life in the city. The world is now moving into an age when the vast majority of people will live in (or around) cities. This is already the case in Europe and the United States, and it is becoming a reality in Latin America. The chapter first describes the early cities before discussing the sociology of cities in the United States, focusing on immigration and migration. It then considers the emergence of suburbs and how they are related to the American inner cities. It also discusses the people of the inner city that are referred to as an “underclass,” living in what Oscar Lewis called a “culture of poverty.” Finally, it looks at new developments that are shaping what may well be the urban landscape of the future, including the new downtowns and sunbelt cities.

Location Cubed

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Massey ◽  
Len Albright ◽  
Rebecca Casciano ◽  
Elizabeth Derickson ◽  
David N. Kinsey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Residential Mobility ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Principal Reason ◽  
Spatial Inequalities ◽  
The People

This chapter talks about the importance of location in human affairs. Naturally the quality of a dwelling has direct implications for the health, comfort, security, and well-being of the people who inhabit it, and matching the attributes of housing with the needs and resources of families has long been a principal reason for residential mobility in the United States. When people purchase or rent a home, however, they not only buy into a particular dwelling and its amenities but also into a surrounding neighborhood and its qualities, for good or for ill. In contemporary urban society, opportunities and resources tend to be distributed unevenly in space, and in the United States spatial inequalities have widened substantially in recent decades. Where one lives is probably more important now than ever in determining one's life chances. In selecting a place to live, a family does much more than simply choose a dwelling to inhabit; it also selects a neighborhood to occupy.

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