Word: urbane
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...Some of this ridicule is a bit unfair. As stores like Urban Outfitters have mass-produced hipster chic, hipsterdom has become a part of mainstream culture, overshadowing its originators' still-strong alternative art and music scene. Those people, of course, no longer identify as hipsters, but they're not the problem. The hipsters who will be the dead end of Western Civilization are the ones who add nothing new or original and simply recycle and reduce old trends into a meaningless meme. It's for that reason that when Williamsburg's hipster playland is in crisis, there aren't many...
...Census determines not just seats in the House of Representatives but also how some $400 billion in annual federal funding gets divvied up, the way companies think about where to build factories and stores, and the shape of political and social discourse about issues like race, ethnicity and urban vs. rural America...
...Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the political phenom who was most likely to be introduced as the "first black President" at speeches before we actually elected the first black President, had accepted a chance to run Barack Obama's new Office of Urban Affairs earlier this year, could anyone have blamed him? After all, Newark's mayors - Hugh Addonizio, Sharpe James - tend to end up in the jailhouse, not the White House. What could be more tactical for a young, telegenic Rhodes scholar with infinite political potential? A home among the Georgetown salons, minutes from the national talk-show studios...
...Newark had its glory days as a multicultural melting pot that produced luminaries like novelist Philip Roth and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. It was a place that, with its strategic location in the Northeast urban corridor and assets like a thriving port, had the potential of Los Angeles. But since the '67 riots and the epic flight that followed, Newark (pop. 280,000) has been searching for its elusive renaissance. Booker, a black kid from the lily-white suburbs of northern New Jersey, has promised to deliver it and prove that an educated, technocratic outsider can rewrite the rules...
...nation," Booker says. "In a way that you're kind of resuscitating people's belief in democracy and belief in the American ideals." If you're a politician who could possibly face Booker down the road, clip that quote. The city is burdened with the same drug, crime and urban-decay issues it had four, 10, 20 years ago. Booker talks a big game, and three years into his term, he has certainly impressed. But despite Booker's best efforts, 2009 Newark isn't shocking anyone...