When Mailer and Breslin proposed a Manhattan monorail and jitney buses, they accompanied their arguments with maps, stats, as well as top, side, and interior views of the vehicles in question. Mailer and Breslin understood that real politics is not just a matter of management but a collective expression of a community's soul. Their two most important ideas, however, were that New York should become the 51st state and that, as a consequence, neighborhoods would become the self-governing equivalents of towns and villages. The DC Statehood Party, which recently merged with the DC Greens, held a city council seat for over 25 years and currently has one of its members on the school board. If citizens of such weak clout as those in DC can get this far, imagine what the powerful folk of New York City could do if they rose up in righteous anger against their lack of equitable representation in the US Senate.
Urban states are the sina qua non of a better America.
Let a dozen of them bloom.