City Journal Audio

City Journal's Brian Anderson and Seth Barron discuss New York's upcoming elections and the prospects of a state government run entirely by Democrats. New York's local politics have long been driven by a partisan split in the state legislature. With the help of moderate Democrats, Republicans have held a narrow majority in the state senate since 2010. This year, however, many of those moderates were beaten in the primaries by more progressive candidates. As a result, Democrats are poised to take over state government in Albany next year. Democrats in the legislature will likely pass a progressive-policy wish list: a millionaires' tax, rent control, single-payer health care, and more. Governor Andrew Cuomo, however, who appears certain to win a third term, is the wild card. It remains to be seen how Cuomo will react to aggressive leftward pressure from his party.

Oriana Schwindt joins City Journal contributing editor Aaron Renn to discuss Schwindt's seven-month-long journey to municipalities near the geographic center of every U.S. state, and what she found there: the curious "sameness" of American cities. Schwindt chronicled her travels in a recent article for New York. In gentrifying neighborhoods across the country, visitors are practically guaranteed to find high-end bars with expensive cocktails, coffee shops with tattooed and bespectacled baristas, new luxury housing in all-glass buildings, and maybe an Asian-fusion restaurant. "The reason so many of these joints feel harvested from Brooklyn," Schwindt writes, "is because they are." While urban aesthetics are important, coffee shops and micro-breweries are no replacement for serious infrastructure investment and economic development.

Andy Ngo joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the recent outbreak of violence in Portland between far-left activists, commonly referred to as Antifa, and right-wing groups that gathered to oppose them. Pacific Northwest cities like Portland and Seattle have long been hotbeds for extreme left-wing political movements. Recently, video emerged of black-clad Antifa activists directing midday traffic and harassing drivers in Portland's business district. A week later, street brawls broke out after an Oregon-based right-wing group called Patriot Prayer held a march in downtown Portland, purportedly in protest of the mayor's oversight of the police and leniency with far-left activists. Political violence may be spreading to other cities: this past weekend, Antifa brawled with members of the Proud Boys in New York. Andy Ngo is an editor at Quillette and a writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, The American Spectator, and City Journal.

City Journal contributing editor Howard Husock is joined in the studio by Shelby Steele to discuss the state of race relations in American society, the history of black protest movements, and other subjects. Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. His books include The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (1990), which won the National Book Critic's Circle Award; White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (2006); and Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country (2015). He has been honored with the Bradley Prize and the National Humanities Medal, and his work on the 1991 documentary Seven Days in Bensonhurst was recognized with an Emmy Award. Read Steele's latest essay for the Wall Street Journal, "Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate."

Mick Cornett joins Aaron Renn to discuss Cornett's time as mayor of Oklahoma City (2004-2018) and his new book The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros. America is full of midsize cities that have prospered through smart governance, including Charleston, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Sacramento—and Oklahoma City. Over the last decade-plus, elected officials and community leaders have made real progress on improving these urban centers, boosting civic vitality, and creating economic opportunity for residents. Cornett's four successful terms as mayor of Oklahoma's largest city offer a blueprint for reform-minded mayors across the country. "The Next American City," Aaron Renn writes, "charts Oklahoma City's transformation, offers examples of similar turnarounds in other cities, and describes Cornett's personal journey from sportscaster to mayor."

Bert Stratton joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to talk about Stratton's experience as a member of one of the most despised but important professions: landlord. Stratton is a musician and blogger, but he makes his living managing apartment units and retail space in a suburban neighborhood outside of his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He prefers to call himself a "landlord-musician." Stratton's first piece for City Journal, a quirky essay called "The Landlord's Tale," appeared in 2012. "Everybody hates landlords," Stratton writes. "Nobody paid rent as a child, so people think they should live free as adults, too."

Robert Poole joins City Journal contributing editor Nicole Gelinas to discuss Poole's new book, Rethinking America's Highways: a 21st-Century Vision for Better Infrastructure. Americans spend untold hours every year sitting in traffic. And despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent by transportation agencies, our nation's roads, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges are in serious disrepair. According to transportation expert Poole, traffic jams and infrastructure deterioration are inevitable outcomes of American infrastructure policymaking, which is overly politicized and prone to short-term thinking. Robert Poole, an MIT-trained engineer, is co-founder and director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, where he has advised numerous federal and state transportation agencies.

Edward L. Glaeser addresses the challenges of convincing skeptical millennials and younger Americans about the merits of capitalism in the Manhattan Institute's 2018 James Q. Wilson lecture. Young people in the United States are moving steadily to the left. A recent Harvard University poll found that 51 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29 don't support capitalism. The trend is visible on the ground, too. Phenomena driven largely by millennials—such as Occupy Wall Street, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and, more recently, the wave of Democratic Socialist candidates for state and federal office--are all signs of an intellectual shift among the young. Video of this lecture can be found at the Manhattan Institute website. Edward L. Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University (where he has taught since 1992), a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal.

Aaron Renn and Rafael Mangual join City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's legacy, the Windy City's ongoing homicide epidemic, and its severely underfunded public pensions. Chicago's energetic leader shocked the political world this week when he announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor. Emanuel leaves behind a mixed record: he enjoyed some successes, but he largely failed to grapple with the city's two biggest problems: finances and violent crime. Aaron Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Rafael Mangual is the deputy director for legal policy at the Manhattan Institute.

John Tierney joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the "First-Year Experience," a widely adopted program for college freshmen that indoctrinates students in radicalism, identity politics, and victimology. The First-Year Experience (FYE) began as a response to the campus unrest of the 1960s and 1970s to teach students to "love their university" with a semester-long course for freshmen. However FYE programs at most schools today are largely designed by left-wing college administrators, not professors, to sermonize about subjects like social justice, environmental sustainability, gender pronouns, and microaggressions. While freshmen could undoubtedly benefit from an introductory course to learn basic skills for college, why do they so often get a mix of trivia and social activism instead of something useful academically? Tierney traveled to the FYE annual conference in San Antonio earlier this year to find out.