Urbanologist Alan Ehrenhalt is author of The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City and executive editor of Stateline, the news service of the Pew Center on the States. Before talking about America’s changing cities, he took questions in the Zócalo green room about his fears, his dreams, and what he’s hiding in his medicine cabinet.
Q. Spicy, medium, or mild?
A. Medium. This is a wide-ranging interview, isn’t it?
Q. When and where was your first plane ride?
A. In 1964 going back from college for Christmas vacation-from Boston to Chicago.
Q. What’s the nation’s most interesting state right now?
A. Texas. Because of the diversity of things that are going on there, and because it’s really a laboratory in the development of urban life.
Q. Where would we find you at 9:00 on a typical Friday night?
A. At home watching a baseball game.
Q. What are you reading right now?
A. An Economist Gets Lunch, which is about restaurants from the point of view of Tyler Cowen, an economist and a food critic.
Q. What’s your greatest irrational fear?
A. That I’m going to come home and suddenly get terrible news when I walk in the door.
Q. What’s your favorite piece of artwork?
A. Anything by Monet.
Q. What’s the last dream you remember having?
A. I dreamed that I had a part in a ’30s comedy. I can’t remember whether I was in it or I was part of the production crew, but I was involved in the making of this movie.
Q. What’s your ideal ice cream sundae composed of?
A. Chocolate and raspberry.
Q. What’s the strangest thing in your medicine cabinet?
A. Probably these pills I sometimes take when I get cramps in my legs, which I don’t know of anyone else using. There’s nothing else too exciting in my medicine cabinet.
*Photo by Felipe Ruiz-Acosta.