Dear Colleagues, I believe the gridlock we are seeing on the national scene here in the USA is but a manifestation of the fundamental shift that is taking place in the world's polity system. Some time ago I wrote a talking paper on the emergence of our new world as we spoke about in the Urban Revolution of CS-I. But I now thing it is happening much faster than we had ever imagined. We are rapidly shifting to the primacy of the Regionalis dynamic (Area-Region-Metro) as the key to the new polity. Here is the link to a book I just heard talked about on the PBS news hour. The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy (Brookings Focus Book) I haven't ordered the Kindle edition, but I think this is a book worth reading. Upon reading the reviews you can see it touches a cord with what people intuit is the new direction for our polity. People identify with "place" and the national and state levels don't provide that kind of energy. Here is the paper I wrote. Grace & Peace, Jack