Eyewitness Proof That Team Obama Takes the Economy to Heart

Through hazy health-care doubletalk and muddy climate-policy compromises, I received the blessing of a ray of good economic practice today. I’m reporting for another publication (a pink one, headquartered in London) and thus I traveled on the 7 am US Airways shuttle to DC. And I can thereby tell you that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan flies coach.

I’ve written here about Donovan’s financially scrupulous bid to put government capital behind durable, economically sensible urban plans. His coalitions with the Department of Energy and Transportation and Labor, and with EPA, form the growing medium for new housing forms and climate-resilient jobs for people with low skills. We’ll hear more from him, and I’ll write more about his tactics, as the froth about health-care dissipates. For now, I confess that I took some heart from seeing him in the aisle seat across from mine, reading a single-page doc on paper with a red pen, staying awake for the whole flight. (More than I could say for your correspondent.) I didn’t bother him because he evoked the sense of a man budgeting his time and attention.

A pretty hopeful sign, for those inclined to crane for hopeful signs, on the first anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ downfall.

Tags: coach, correspondent, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Lehman Brothers, London, secretary, Shaun Donovan, US Airways

Alec Appelbaum writes about real estate, true-green business and architecture for the New York Times, Fast Company, New York magazine and others. He has also contributed to Architectural Record, the A ...read more