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Baltimore
November 01, 2006
D.C. fights the sprawl-loving feds. (Hat Tip: Dan DiSalvo)Two years of scandal don't seem to have hurt Mayor Daley in the lead up to next year's mayoral election in the latest poll. And his new ad buy is one more sign he'll be running.Daley's call for "superdorms" in the downtown Loop is one more sign of the increasing importance of colleges to cities.A must-read on Ehrlich and O'Malley, who are running neck-and-neck in Baltimore, where the murder rate is increasingly an issue.
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October 27, 2006
An East Coaster identifies The L.A. Times' ongoing identity crisis. David Geffen looks to buy the paper—is this the end of Times?Geffen's not alone in looking to take papers private, as Jack Welch pursues the Boston Globe (will his wife edit the paper?) and Yusef Jackson goes after the Chicago Sun-Times (which would then be a safe bet to back his father and brother, no?), and now local politician Ted Venetoulis is heading a group looking to purchase the Baltimore Sun.Staying in Baltimore, the status quo is striking back—will Mayor O'Malley's new enemies make him a victim of his own success as he runs for governor?Over in D.C., Democratic nominee and presumptive next maor Adrian Fenty continues his magical mystery tour. Having already visited with O'Malley, Daley and Bloomberg, he's now gone to L.A. to talk about local control of schools and other issues with Mayor Villaraigosa.
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October 24, 2006
Otis White looks at fast declining public school enrollments in cities across the West Coast, including a 10,000 student drop from a year ago in California, the first statewide dip in 25 years.
Baltimore is "one of those odd American cities that lies in no county; instead, it dangles in the water, surrounded by a ragged blob of land… a monkey wrench hanging from the Mason-Dixon Line, which makes Baltimore City the bolt -- one that has been tightened a hair too much." The city Baltimore most closely resembles is New Orleans: Both retain a rakish 19th century charm and police forces and court systems to match that make them ideal locations for novels and novelists.
The Times looks at the housing market and uncovers the obvious—"the housing burden is not carried uniformly, and it is particularly daunting for those with low or stagnant wages who have had to deal with the reality of escalating real estate costs. In that respect, some say, Kansas is not all that different from Manhattan or anyplace else."
On the list of the 100 cities with the lowest ratio of home value to household income, all are small cities and 31 of the top 50 are in Texas. On the flip side, 35 of the 50 cities with the most leveraged homes are in California, and a lot more are cities you've heard of. Both lists from the addictive to browse city-data.com.
Julia Vitullo-Martin sees cause for hope in Newark.
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