Across the country, in towns outside the media spotlight, a new America is being built - one that is innovative, compromise-minded, optimistic, and working toward practical solutions to the problems of this age.
This is the site for the people, communities, and organizations creating America's future, right now.
The Story of a Journey, and of an America That Works
Since 2013, Deborah and James Fallows have traveled to small communities in every part of the country that have faced economic shocks, political crises, or other serious hardships. Each place they went, they talked with teachers, business creators, mayors, religious leaders, students, artists and architects, librarians, and others involved in shaping their community's future.
As they traveled across the country, at low altitude in a little propeller airplane, they saw the patterns of river and hill that explain the pattern of American settlement. On the ground, they saw the emerging pattern of American reinvention - through the stories collected here
Featured Stories
'What to Watch' Recommends 'Our Towns' HBO Documentary
Editor Phil Nickinson lauds the film's "expansive perspective on America that finds unexpected connections between personal stories, community actions, and the arc of history."
HBO Releases Trailer for 'Our Towns' Documentary
The film introduces us to a wide range of civic leaders, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, students, and more, witnessing their love for their communities and the innovative ways they are improving them.
HBO Announces Premier of 'Our Towns' Documentary
HBO'S 'Our Towns,' a panoramic yet intimate look at small towns throughout America.
How Libraries Are Leading the Way to Digital Equity
The past year of pandemic has dramatized the importance of fairer internet access—and the surprising new roles that American libraries are assuming.
When a Company Invests in an 'Underdog City'
The story of how a company that started in one of these places is now involving people and businesses in another—and why that matters in the next stage of equitable American recovery.
Learning From the New Deal—For the Next Recovery
If national-level policy, in the Biden era, is now trying to support economic recovery and renewal of left-behind areas, ideas on how to do that, and the experimentations and implementations on getting it done, are largely going to occur at the local level.
What Post-pandemic Repair Could Look Like
An update, following a report last month, on plans to repair the damage now being done.
Why Some Libraries Are Eliminating Fines
Are fines consistent with a fundamental mission of libraries: to serve the public with information and knowledge? And to address that mission equitably across the diverse population of rich and poor library users?
How to Reconnect Rural and Urban America
Some recent items worth noticing
A 'Climate Corps' of California Volunteers
Designed to address both the causes and the effects of California's exposure to climate change.
'A Most Beautiful Thing' in a Time of Racial Reckoning
This film's story would be surprising and engrossing at any time, but it has a current power and relevance its producers could not have foreseen when they began making it.
The Artists of Lemmon, South Dakota
The role of the arts in a tiny town with its sights set high.
'This Is What We Train For'
During our five years of travel around the country, my husband Jim and I often found that artists who revealed the perspectives on their hometowns were the people who stopped us in our tracks.
Press
The story of a journey, and a country remaking itself: “Our Towns will become a classic, joining the ranks of American odysseys from De Tocqueville to Dos Passos. THe landscape unfurls beneath us; the language of different regions echoes in our ears. Most important, this book is a tonic for what ails us as a nation, a captivating story of energy and renewal across the land.”
—Anne-Marie Slaughter, President & CEO, New America
“In the tradition of John Steinbeck and Studs Terkel, the Fallows have crisscrossed the country in search of the extraordinary strength and character of ordinary people and places. What they’ve found--in towns we know and others off the beaten path—should give us all great hope for the future.” —California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.
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