Apr 28 Patchwork Nation: The Housing Market and the ‘Real’ Recovery By Dante Chinni Standing in the spring of 2010 looking around at the economy, we think it's worth asking: What does a recovery look like? There have been positive signs lately - the auto industry looks much better and consumer confidence… Continue reading
Apr 21 Tea Party Mapped: How Big Is It and Where Is It based? By Dante Chinni If you turned to a cable news channel in recent weeks, you may have seen a large group of "tea party" protesters, signs in hand, expressing outrage over government tyranny. But how big are those groups really? The tea party… Continue reading
Apr 16 Patchwork Nation: Land-Use Measure Could Create More Varied Florida By Dante Chinni The story of Florida over the past half-century has been a story of real estate. Booms and busts and disputes between developers and preservationists can be deep and lead to tensions within communities in the state. We wrote about the… Continue reading
Apr 14 Among Florida Retirees, Anger Over Health Care Reform By Dante Chinni Clermont, Fla. - Mike Glantz has never been particularly politically involved. But the 70-something decided he was bothered enough by what's going on in Washington to organize a "tea party" meeting in this central Florida community. He booked time in… Continue reading
Apr 12 Florida’s Economic Dilemma: Change We Need, or Not? By Dante Chinni Clermont, Fla. -- Economic times are hard in this small town in the center of the Florida peninsula. Unemployment in Lake County hovers around 13 percent, and home foreclosures, which clocked in at about 5,800 last year, look to… Continue reading
Apr 07 Patchwork Nation: Obama Approval Ratings Vary Across Communities By Dante Chinni One thing seems clear from a look at President Obama's approval ratings: He is not as popular in April 2010 as he was in April 2009. Much of that is to be expected, of course: The presidential honeymoon often doesn't… Continue reading
Apr 05 Patchwork Nation: Using Technology to Change the World By Dante Chinni Ask the same question to people in Patchwork Nation's 12 community types and you will likely find very different answers. That is just what a group of journalism students from Syracuse University did last summer. The students, working on… Continue reading
Apr 02 Patchwork Nation: Unemployment Rate Stories From Very Different Places By Anna Shoup A lot of economic numbers and letters have been flying around this recession: unemployment rates, foreclosure rates, and L-, U- and W-shaped recessions. Patchwork Nation even has its own Economic Hardship Index. On Friday, the March unemployment report… Continue reading
Mar 31 Patchwork Nation: Ohio’s Broadband Availability vs. Affordability By Dante Chinni The state of Internet connectivity in the U.S. has been a big story the past few weeks. Officials everywhere from the Federal Communications Commission to Google are looking to improve America's high-speed networks. But what exactly do the… Continue reading
Mar 29 Cape Cod and Scott Brown: Lessons For the Midterm Elections? By Dante Chinni Hyannis, Mass. -- The Massachusetts special Senate election is more than two months old now - ancient history by American political standards. But if you walk up Main Street here, past the Cape Cod Central Railroad Building, you'll still see… Continue reading