Lost in Exurbia, Part Three – The Definitions

Thursday, 29 January 2009, 23:15 | Category : Politics, exurbia, localpolitics

Digging in to the definitions
Soundtrack: Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys
Some of the best resources I found are Census.gov, the Brookings Institute, the New Politics Institute, the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, and the Exurban Change Program and the Swank Program in Rural-Urban Policy at Ohio State University.
To boil it down to its [...]

Lost in Exurbia, Part Two

Tuesday, 27 January 2009, 17:55 | Category : Politics, exurbia, localpolitics

Something Doesn’t Add Up
Soundtrack: Add It Up by the Violent Femmes [watch the volume - not work safe]
I ended my last post by asking “what does this have to do with exurbia?”
Since 2006, much has been written speculating that the GOP was losing its stranglehold on the suburbs/exurbia. In post-election articles last year, analysts [...]

Lost in Exurbia, Part One

Sunday, 25 January 2009, 15:43 | Category : Politics, exurbia, localpolitics

Down is Up and Up is Down or Down the Rabbit Hole (with apologies to Lewis Carroll)
For your listening pleasure, enjoy the accompanying soundtrack: White Rabbit by Jefferson Starship
My next step in laying the groundwork for my series of posts on Licking County (LC) involved exploring the categories used by political scientists to divide and [...]

At Last

Wednesday, 21 January 2009, 9:06 | Category : Politics, localpolitics

Time for a commercial break. I thought my next post on local politics would be straightforward, an examination of the categories used by political scientists to quantify geographical areas. I was wrong. My research has led me many places, all of which are interesting. I am compiling notes as I read [...]

Let’s Get (it) Started: Overview

Thursday, 15 January 2009, 23:29 | Category : Politics, exurbia, localpolitics

Licking County was established in 1808. In the central region, it is the second largest county by area in the state of Ohio at 686.5 square miles. In the 2000 census, the population was 145,419. Estimates from 2006 put the population at 156,287. As of November 4, 2008, there were 112,146 [...]

Drilling Down

Wednesday, 14 January 2009, 15:32 | Category : Politics, blog, localpolitics

Ipsissimus left a thought-provoking comment on my most recent post about re-entering Ohio’s political blogosphere. Here is my response, edited as I think about it more.

Thanks for drilling down to the core, Ips. Great discussion! Yes, my initial reaction to the bluntness was “ouch” but I need to remember it’s good to slap [...]

Re-entering Ohio’s political blogosphere: First things first

Monday, 12 January 2009, 18:37 | Category : Politics, blog, localpolitics

I spent the weekend trying to decide how to re-enter the Ohio political blogosphere. As I mentioned in my last post, while there is a lot of fodder in my county, there is also a fine line I do not want to cross, at least not right now.
When I write about friends [...]