When Affordable Housing Meets Free-Market Fantasy
Policy wonks left and right have sought to blame the U.S. housing crisis on local zoning regulations. But the evidence tells a different story.
Spring 2025
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The Limits of the “Left Coast Formula”: A Response to James N. Gregory
As a lifetime resident of coastal California whose community activism dates back to Peoples Park (Berkeley, 1969), I turned with interest to James N. Gregory’s “Seattle’s Left Coast Formula” (Dissent, Winter 2015)—and came away mystified. According to Gregory, “Seattle shares …
Bill McKibben’s Difficult Political Education
Bill McKibben’s recent writing leaves an impression of the author as a highly effective leader among leaders in the U.S. climate movement. The portrait seems credible. Why, then, is McKibben at pains to repudiate it?
Progressive Incoherence in “Radical” Berkeley
Berkeley politics flesh out uncertainties if not downright disagreements on the left over “growth,” environmentalism, U.S. manufacturing, homelessness, and public employee compensation. To grasp the political realities of today’s Berkeley is not only to dispel an antiquated myth about an iconic place; it’s also to begin to grapple with major incoherence in progressivism at large.
Cooperation and Cunning 
Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation by Richard Sennett Yale University Press, 2012, 336 pp. Richard Sennett’s new book was already in press when the Occupy movement took to the streets last fall. But its title alone suggests …
The Problem with Smart Growth: A Response to Benjamin Ross
Zelda Bronstein: The Problem with Smart Growth – A Response to Benjamin Ross
Politics’ Fatal Therapeutic Turn
This is a moment in American life that cries out for far-flung activism on behalf of a bold democratic agenda. Instead, the partisans of democracy are largely demobilized and defensive. Why? Progressives are apt to blame cynicism spawned by Barack …
Zelda Bronstein Replies
Rather than engage my argument, Marshall Ganz dismisses it out of hand. He says that I misunderstand his work, but he never says how. Instead, he expounds on his theory of “public narrative” and its ability to move people by …
Industry and the Smart City
These days, U.S. city planning exudes an audacious air. The suburban sprawl that has dominated U.S. development since the Second World War is under assault from a multitude of policy makers and activists bent on protecting the environment and revitalizing …
Nowhere Woman
Global Woman : Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by Arlie Russell Hochschild and Barbara Ehrenreich
American Stories: Barbershop and 8 Mile
If not for the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Barbershop might have been merely one of the most popular black films in American history. Written, directed, and produced by blacks, this tale of a day in the life of …
Feminist Pundits and Hillary Clinton
When Erica Jong’s hymn to Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in the Nation last November, it was only the latest in a series of feminist tributes to the First Lady. In a March 1993 double salute to Mrs. Clinton and the …
Zelda Bronstein Replies
I end my article by calling for a better feminist conversation. Joanne Barkan’s response is what I have in mind, not because I agree with everything she says—I don’t—but because she meets the issues, and does so in a manner …
Feminist Pundits and Hillary Clinton
When Erica Jong’s hymn to Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in the Nation last November, it was only the latest in a series of feminist tributes to the First Lady. In a March 1993 double salute to Mrs. Clinton and the …
Feminism and the Common Good: The California Health Care System
Is American feminism about to become interesting again? The June 3, 1996 issue of the New Yorker opened with Betty Friedan’s comments on the Stand for Children event in Washington, D.C. Under the subhead, “A gathering heralds a shift toward …
