Very interesting show on PBS called Frontline. Use one of the services below to sign in to PBS: They are vastly more affordable, making possible a more expansive, less stressed existence; they are places where, thanks to their high need and smaller scale, one committed person or family can make a real difference.And they offer countless offbeat discoveries of the sort one is less likely to find in glossier environs. Optimists about Middle America like to point to a handful of non-coastal cities that are thriving, without noting the many nearby cities being left behind.

Yes, they’re home to Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, joked darkly in a recent interview with me about how it took the 2016 election to draw notice to the plight of Middle America. The 2016 election drew a lot of attention to the urban-rural divide — between vibrant blue islands and fading red expanses that turned out so strongly for Donald Trump. A mother’s fight to survive COVID and see her newborn baby. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the John D. and Catherine … Live TV But this betrays a misreading of who lives in these struggling cities. This week they showcased the rise and fall of Dayton Ohio. Shaun Evans charms audiences with his portrayal of the cerebral Detective Constable Morse. There are fights over Uber limits in New York, cash-free purchasing in Washington, D.C., and extreme housing costs in San Francisco.Dayton, Ohio, has been grappling with a different set of concerns.

It’s now worth also considering what it means to have so much wealth concentrated in a narrow slice of cities.In order to foster a civil and literate discussion that respects all participants, FRONTLINE has the following guidelines for commentary.

As certain industries become dominated by certain companies — think of Google and Facebook’s growing share of ad revenue, or Amazon’s growing share of retail — it follows that more and more wealth flows to the places where those companies are based: the Bay Area and Seattle.Social factors play a role, too.

Dayton, Ohio, has been grappling with a different set of concerns. The result is less than ideal for everyone: Those in the winner-take-all cities struggle to get by even with a decent salary, while those in the left-behind cities face demoralizing blight and struggle to find fulfilling work.This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen in the digital age. Nonetheless, I’ve developed a strong fondness for them — not just a fondness, but a preference for them over the winner-take-all cities. “On one side, cities with little human capital and traditional economies started experiencing diminishing returns and stiff competition from abroad. “I mean, like look, I think the coastals need to pay attention to this because we can destroy elections,” she said. “You know, that’s what we can do, and I mean, For now, though, these cities are forging ahead on their own. One evening in Dayton — at the end of a day when I observed a harrowing autopsy at the coroner’s office of a 45-year-old woman who had suffered a drug overdose — I stumbled upon a chess club inside an abandoned retail building downtown with a beautiful terra-cotta façade.

For Dayton, that has meant, among other things, Cities like Dayton are also embracing job growth of a sort that not so long ago would have been considered beneath them. Montgomery County Coroner Kent Harshbarger has deployed refrigerator truck back-ups usually reserved for mass fatality events. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The country must decide what it’s willing to do to narrow the regional gaps, from tackling economic concentration to targeting public investment.

Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation, the Park Foundation, The John and Helen Glessner Family Trust, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation.

Take, for instance, the increasingly stark contrast between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, where I live. Baltimore is laboring to demolish thousands of late-19You might expect regional inequality to self-correct, given how costly and congested the hyper-prosperous cities have become. Today, manufacturing is typically done overseas, while the wealth accumulates in the hub cities where the intellectual property originated.Economic concentration also plays a role in how the tech economy fuels regional inequality.