Michael Dudley

Suburban and exurban developments are pushing traditional land uses aside at a rate of more than a million acres of rural land per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Felix G. Rohatyn and Warren Rudman say opponents of "big government" must realize that private enterprise has always been made possible by federal investments in physical infrastructure, and that this federal role needs to be reconceived and refined.

Despite promises made by President Bush to rebuild the City of New Orleans, reluctance on the part of the federal government to invest in rebuilding the levees and other reconstruction efforts is essentially a "death warrant" for the city.

As residents are allowed back in to their flood-damaged neighborhoods, the world is beginning to learn the extent of the devastation in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.

Four years later, there are a host of unanswered questions about the events of 9/11, including the unexplained and unprecedented architectural collapses of three office towers, and the extent of toxicity in the air of Lower Manhattan.