Affordable Housing Institute : US

Something potentially remarkable is happening in Kenya right now, and it’s happening because of slums, or more precisely Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.  Kibera’s residents, long ignored in economic and policy terms, may just decide Kenya’s next president.  As reported last week in the Boston Globe:
 
In Kenya, presidential race could hinge on voters in slum
 
NAIROBI - […]

The pillory, I have always thought, was among the cleverer of human punishments, mingling ostensible restraint with cynical cruelty.  What could be more salutary than exposing the malefactor to public humiliation and shame?  And what could be more deniably vicious than placing him where one could rely on the cowardly sadism of passers-by to shower […]

It’s easy to be a guru, someone once observed.  Just make lots of outlandish predictions, then publicize only the ones you got right. 
 

I foresee that I will claim my predictions were right all along!
 
But on the internet, everyone knows what you said [even if no one cares! – Ed.], so, for better or worse, […]

 
After the cities-are-doomed gloom of the 1950’s, as imagined by Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1956) — about which I wrote a two-part post — the 1960’s ushered in a different era of urban pessimism, with the Club of Rome’s frightening pseudo-computerized forecast, The Limits to Growth, and Paul […]

[previous months in review available here: Oct 07, Sep 07, Aug 07, Jul 07, Jun 07, May 07,  Apr 07, Mar 07, Feb 07, Jan 07;] 

“For these bountiful blog posts we are about to receive, let us be truly thankful.”
 
As the credit crisis ripples through the financial markets, completely repricing the risk curve, subprime-related stories […]