cuba 2.0, publicación digital del PDC-Cuba

The view south from Park Avenue and 94th Street around 1882. | Museum of the City of New York [CLICK TO MORE PHOTOS]

How Manhattan’s Grid Grew. Interactive Map
Manhattan’s Master Plan. Slide Show

In the old photograph, a lonely farmhouse sits on a rocky hill, shaded by tall trees. The scene looks like rural Maine. On the modern street, apartment buildings tower above trucks and cars passing a busy corner where an AMC Loews multiplex faces an overpriced hamburger joint and a Coach store.

They are both the same spot. Not so long ago, all things considered, the intersection of Broadway and 84th Street didn’t exist; the area was farmland. "The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011," now at the Museum of the City of New York, unearths that 1879 picture of the Brennan Farm among other historic gems. The show celebrates the anniversary of what remains not just a landmark in urban history but in many ways the defining feature of the city.

Republicans have reached their 1984. I don’t mean this in the Orwellian sense, though Republicans have more than their share of Orwellian impulses. Rather, I mean that the kind of divisions that have characterized Democratic presidential primaries since the 1984 contest between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart have now popped up in GOP primaries as well: This year, Republicans are dividing along lines of class.

According to data compiled by the Wall Street Journal, in all the states that have voted thus far, Mitt Romney has won 46 percent of the counties with incomes higher than the statewide median, and just 15 percent of those with incomes beneath the statewide median. Rick Santorum, by contrast, has won 39 percent of the counties with higher income, and 46 percent of those with lower income.

These numbers — a product of the kind of residential-sorting-by-class that Charles Murray documents in his new book, "Coming Apart" — reinforce exit polling that shows Romney’s strongest supporters come from households making more than $100,000 a year. Indeed, the higher up the income scale, the higher the level of Romney support.

Why aren’t there more liberals in America?

It’s not because liberalism lacks cultural power. Many polls suggest that a majority of college professors and national journalists vote Democratic. The movie, TV, music and publishing industries are dominated by liberals.

It’s not because recent events have disproved the liberal worldview. On the contrary, we’re still recovering from a financial crisis caused, in large measure, by Wall Street excess. Corporate profits are zooming while worker salaries are flat.

It’s not because liberalism’s opponents are going from strength to strength. The Republican Party is unpopular and sometimes embarrassing.

Portaviones Gerald Ford, de última generación, que ahora construye Estados Unidos. Zarpará en 2015.

El presidente Obama hizo esta semana algo que ningún predecesor suyo había hecho: ir a la sala de prensa del Pentágono a presentar una nueva estrategia de Defensa. El documento se titula "Mantener el liderazgo de Estados Unidos: prioridades para el siglo XXI". No es un texto detallado, sino ocho páginas de guías generales.

Pero es importante por dos motivos: primero, el gobierno quiere recortar el presupuesto de Defensa y empieza a anunciar cómo y, segundo, da una idea de las intenciones militares de Estados Unidos para esta década. Según el secretario de Defensa, Leon Panetta, el objetivo del plan es construir "el ejército de 2020, una fuerza de tamaño y forma distintos a la de la Guerra Fría". Es decir, más pequeño y aún sin un enemigo de su capacidad.

WATCHING the Republican Party struggling to agree on a presidential candidate, one wonders whether the G.O.P. shouldn’t just sit this election out — just give 2012 a pass.

You know how in Scrabble sometimes you look at your seven letters and you’ve got only vowels that spell nothing? What do you do? You go back to the pile. You throw your letters back and hope to pick up better ones to work with. That’s what Republican primary voters seem to be doing. They just keep going back to the pile but still coming up with only vowels that spell nothing.

There’s a reason for that: Their pile is out of date. The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases: anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government, and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub.