"The Internet is injecting new energy into many U.S. cities as public, private, and nonprofit institutions realize that a powerful new communications tool can transform the traditional roles of government and business. In social terms, this promises a closer, more interactive relationship between a community and its citizens. To a city's business community, it offers the dream of a local or regional economy transformed, Silicon Valley-style, by high-tech success.

This report examines how institutions in five cities are adapting to the Internet. Its main focus is on economic and community development organizations in those cities that have sought to use the Internet to improve performance or broadly benefit the community. The cities studied are Austin, Texas; Cleveland, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.

In exploring how institutions in these cities are using the Internet, this research asks whether the Internet is serving as a catalyst to change the "rules of the game" that shape social capital -- the informal norms and customs that grease the wheels of urban life. It also looks at how communities themselves may shape the Internet by developing Internet content to serve their needs in specific ways. And by comparing what is happening in all five cities, the report makes recommendations on best practices for cities seeking to take advantage of the Internet."

"The project began when a Yancey County official read about a landfill recovery plan in Florida, said Terry Woodruff, the site's project manager and an employee of the Blue Ridge Resource Conservation and Development Council. Officials contacted the development council, an arm of the federal Agriculture Department, which set up EnergyXchange with Mayland Community College and HandMade in America, a nonprofit organization that fosters economic development with crafts. Organizers received several grants to start the project but are now trying to make it self-supporting with money from plant sales.

In addition to nurturing artists and the local economy, the project helps the environment, Mr. Woodruff said."

Lustrons, prefabricated homes of the 1950s are making a comeback of sorts ...

"The entire package seemed designed to make life easy for new homeowners. Each house fit on the back of a truck that was specially designed so that the parts were unloaded in exactly the order needed. It was so prefabricated that an experienced work crew could assemble one in less than a week. The finished product was rodentproof, fireproof and of course termiteproof."

"A viable neighborhood is a community; and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common."

"So far as I can see, the idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence. In a viable neighborhood, neighbors ask themselves what they can do or provide for one another, and they find answers that they and their place can afford. This, and nothing else, is the practice of neighborhood. This practice must be, in part, charitable, but it must also be economic, and the economic part must be equitable; there is a significant charity in just prices."

A short supply of housing -- especially housing affordable to the working class -- is one of the most tenacious problems facing Silicon Valley. Henry Cisneros, CEO of American City Vista in San Antonio, thinks Silicon Valley and other urban areas can ease the housing crunch by developing communities of well designed home on underused urban properties, such as failed strip malls.

Go to http://www.americancityvista.com/AboutACV.htm to read more about American City Vista.

How can America insure itself against future terrorist attacks? The answer isnÕt politically easy, but the stakes couldnÕt be higher.

An article on the long term consequences on of the September 11 Terrorist attacks on property insurance. ÒThis could slowly but surely lead to the de-urbanization of America and the closing of any iconic buildings.Ó Warren Buffett

"While the greater metropolitan area is still spreading out, especially 60 to 70 miles east toward the desert, the nation's second-biggest city is growing inward, upward, and making a fledgling attempt to free itself from the automobile.Last year, Los Angeles issued more building permits for housing inside the city -- more than 8,500 units -- than at any time in at least a decade. Most were for the kind of projects planners praise as the antithesis of sprawl.

Downtown, almost 4,000 lofts are under construction or in development, giving fresh life to a moribund historic district. In the riot zones of South Central, hundreds of houses have risen on weed-choked lots. Throughout the city, parking lots are going down and more densely built apartments and commercial developments are going up.

A person can walk in Los Angeles, from home to work to curbside food vendor. Every day, nearly 250,000 people take the subway, the most expensive ever built in the nation. Even if the number of train riders is only a fraction of total commuters -- and a blip by New York or Chicago standards -- the volume has exceeded expectations by about 50 percent."

"A brochure touts the housing development as "Pure American."

The interior of one model home looks like it was ripped from a Pottery Barn catalog. On the shelves are volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica and novels by Tom Clancy, James Michener and Judy Blume. A framed photo shows a couple laughing on their wedding day. Another is of Andy Griffith with Opie by his side.In the recreation room, the board game Sorry lies open on a table.

Welcome to Orange County. No, not that Orange County. This is Orange County, China.

An hour's drive from the heart of Beijing, a Chinese developer, working with a Newport Beach architect and Orange County designers, is capitalizing on what may become the world's largest housing market in an era of rapid economic reform in China."