Henry David Thoreau wrote that, "City life is millions of people being lonesome together." Viewed from afar, city life can indeed appear impersonal and isolated. But that view, to turn a rural cliché on its head, misses the trees for the forest. Most cities are really a collection of local...

At the United Nations General Assembly this month, President Obama called on each of the world's countries to shoulder its share of responsibility for a "global response to global challenges." Few of these challenges are more daunting or imbued with possibility than the global demographic shift taking place in metropolitan...

At the start of Ken Burns' extraordinary documentary on baseball, essayist Gerald Early mused that, in 2,000 years, American civilization will be known for only three things: the Constitution, baseball, and jazz. Early's point, Burns later wrote, was that "the genius of America is improvisation."

This week, as millions gather...

This week, the Rockefeller Foundation and TIME released a comprehensive survey, which asked several thousand Americans about their sense of economic security. One finding took us especially by surprise: almost half of America's youngest workers believe the nation's best days may have come and gone.

This is Generation Y:...