Michael Dudley

With the Census Bureau still without a Director and the 2010 Census looming, the count is facing a new threat in the form of right-wing conspiracy theories.

John Petro counters Joel Kotkin's views that America's post-bubble housing policy should be "a renewed quest for homeownership."

Eoin O'Carroll, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, notes the plans to bulldoze neighborhoods in decaying American cities and wonders if all this waste couldn't be avoided in the future by building more pre-fab houses.

Gary Mason describes how Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's policy of rapid expansion of homeless shelters -- including two in residential areas -- has "completely changed" those neighborhoods.

Author Greg Gardin travels from Michigan to the Amazon to show how the Fordist economy's reductionistic search for efficiencies led to its own -- and Detroit's -- downfall.