Like many Americans, I live amidst the hustle and bustle of a city. While it makes recording podcasts pretty tough sometimes, I mean, the recycling truck just went by only a few minutes ago, I really wouldn't trade it for the world. And a lot of Americans actually agree with me. In fact, the Census Bureau estimates that 83% of the US population lives in urban areas. That's a remarkable increase from the 1950s when only 64% of us subscribed to urban lifestyles. Americans, live, work, and play together in densely populated urban corridors from the towering megalopolises of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to the sprawling city-county conglomerates in places like Charlotte, Atlanta, and Houston. And they also live in smaller, but no less important cities, like Baltimore, the home of UMBC.