Free Republic

Conservatives need to address urban concerns and try to bridge the growing rural-urban divide, rather than just denouncing cities as the malign foil of real America. Chicago, Illinois — Looking out over downtown Chicago on a bright, unusually warm Christmas Eve, I get why people love this city, even though I am not really among them. I’m not a city person, and even if I were, this isn’t my city.This is not just a burst of Christmas cheer. Christmas Day will be over by the time I finish writing this article, let alone by the time it is edited and...

The “homeless billionaire,” a world-renowned architect and the future of Brick City.Newark is building again. Yes, that Newark—the city in Jersey that burned after the ’67 riots, the one that helped to define “white flight,” that struggles still with almost impenetrable unemployment and homelessness and crime. That city is building. And here it all is—its past and present and future—pouring through Irene Hall’s floor-to-ceiling windows downtown: the whites and browns of the Old First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1666; haggard red brick facades with windows sealed off by cinderblock; the neon blue lights of Hotel Indigo, which opened last year...