The city of Pittsburgh, at one time, was so choked by coal pollution that Boston writer James Parton dubbed it "hell with the lid off." A series of vintage photos recently published in The Atlantic show city streets so dim with smog that you'd think a massive fire was smoldering nearby.

companies are making tough decisions about where money is spent, and they are having a hard time justifying investing in their future when their present looks so shaky.

People who lose their jobs can suffer "large and persistent earnings losses that last over twenty years." In other words, if you lose your job in mid-career, you will likely never earn as much as you used to.

The enemies remain the car, the superhighway, the notion of endless oil and the willingness to grit teeth and accept the constraints of what passes for life in metrosprawl.

We need to make communities strong again. Our local money does not need to be mixed in with some guy's hedge fund abstract tranche of nothing all to make a fee for some banker in New York.