local-reporting

Big cities dominate America’s cultural consciousness in ways that the countryside — amber waves of grain notwithstanding — can only dream of: Manhattan skyscrapers, L.A. movie stars and Chicago’s “big shoulders,” as Carl Sandburg put it in his 1916 poem. Cities can have political power, too, embodied by recently departed but long-serving mayors such as Boston’s Thomas Menino (21 years), Chicago’s Richard M. Daley (22 years) and New York’s Michael Bloomberg (12 years).

The “American dream” may or may not be a single-family home in the suburbs, but the American reality is looking more and more like a multifamily rental property.

From the moment the baby-boom generation took its first steps in 1946, its members have had an enormous impact on the United States. They powered the suburbanization of America in the 1950s, youth rebellion in the 1960s and the “Me Decade” of the 1970s. And now as they approach retirement, their sheer numbers will continue to drive societal change.