Tom Paine

There has been a great deal of press given lately to the crisis in the housing market. The real crisis, writes Alec Dubro, is shelter unaffordability and homelessness for low-income earners.

Local governments and citizens are finding that tackling community problems requires new forms of deliberative democracy.

It's not just New Orleans: cities across America need help. What's needed is the political will to do it.

The only way to meet the challenges of the 21st Century is to address poverty, pollution and environmental sustainability in the world's cities, writes Worldwatch Institute president Christopher Flavin.

Federal governments everywhere are not structured to recognize -- much less address -- the serious environmental pressures they face, and as a result end up responding militarily. The alternative? Ministries and Departments of Sustainable Development.

We can do a lot of things to move to a future powered by alternative energy sources. One of the most important, writes K.C. Golden, is to elect leaders who are willing to tell us the truth -- that fossil fuels are expensive.

Despite a Senate report that recommended FEMA be dismantled and replaced, the troubled agency is still "holding the purse strings" on recovery in New Orleans, and tens of thousands of residents may be cut off from rental assistance monies next month.