The District
Stories from city hallsThe decisions closest to you get the least scrutiny. We read the transcripts, agendas, and roll-call votes of more than 3,000 American city halls, and report what we find.
Out of Order
705 councils. 48 states. The year American city-council meetings came apart — inside six rooms where local democracy broke down in 2026, each verified on the official video.
Read the full story →The most recent dispatches.
100 Days of Zohran
286 videos. 2,476 scored segments. At 100 days, Mayor Mamdani has not reversed a single campaign promise — but the way he talks about them has measurably shifted, and only on the planks where Albany, not City Hall, holds the pen.
Five Years After Marshall
551 meetings. 10.78 million words. Four years of Boulder-area councils governing in the actuarial shadow of the fire that burned a thousand homes.
Three Cities, One Fire Zone
1,700+ government meetings across three cities that share a school system, a water utility, and a set of hills — but govern completely differently.
One Sunday-morning email per week.
Every city we’ve covered.
2026
- 01City705 councils. 48 states. The year American city-council meetings came apart — inside six rooms where local democracy broke down in 2026, each verified on the official video.Jun 2026
Out of Order
- 02New York City, NY286 videos. 2,476 scored segments. At 100 days, Mayor Mamdani has not reversed a single campaign promise — but the way he talks about them has measurably shifted, and only on the planks where Albany, not City Hall, holds the pen.May 2026
100 Days of Zohran
- 03Boulder County, CO551 meetings. 10.78 million words. Four years of Boulder-area councils governing in the actuarial shadow of the fire that burned a thousand homes.Apr 2026
Five Years After Marshall
- 04Lamorinda, CA1,700+ government meetings across three cities that share a school system, a water utility, and a set of hills — but govern completely differently.Mar 2026
Three Cities, One Fire Zone
- 05Piedmont, CA461 meetings. Five governing bodies. 9.3 million words. Everything Piedmont said in six years — every committee, every debate, every decision.Mar 2026
The Most Deliberative Square Mile in America
- 06Pittsburgh, PA108,394 votes. 25 years. Pittsburgh's council agreed on 97% of everything — then fractured over property taxes, housing, and who pays for a city that deferred hard choices for two decades.Mar 2026
The Bill Comes Due
- 07Austin, TX2,588 meetings. 93 government bodies. 5,108 hours. Every public meeting Austin held in five years — the most passionate debates produced the most lopsided votes.Mar 2026
Forty-Seven Million Words
- 08Ann Arbor, MI142 cities. 8.1 million votes. Ann Arbor's council has the highest dissent rate in America — and it's been that way for seventeen years.Feb 2026
The City That Won't Agree
- 09San Francisco, CA33 datasets. 19.5 million rows. 1,310 meeting transcripts. A data-driven autopsy of San Francisco's pandemic crisis and the question everyone's asking: is the turnaround real?Feb 2026
Through the Fog
- 10Oakland, CA$94K median incomes. A $360M deficit. 342 missing officers. An interactive simulation of the trade-offs Oakland faces over the next decade.Feb 2026
Five Futures for Oakland
The definitive guide.
How Local Government Works
14 chapters on the machinery closest to daily life — from who runs your city to where your property taxes go. Built on transcripts, case law, and Census data from 90,000+ jurisdictions.
Investigate the data yourself.
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The Data Center Atlas
Nobody publishes where the world's data centers are, so we built the map from public records — 2,353 sites, each tied to a permit, filing, or report you can open yourself.
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The Vote Tracker
1,524 local officials. 25,219 recorded votes. See who's voting yes — and who's blocking progress.
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Temperature Check
438 cities. Millions of public comments. How contentious is your local government?
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The Abundance Index
Which cities welcome growth and which fight it? 84 cities ranked by their openness to housing development.
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The Data Center Gold Rush
156 cities. 2,847 meetings. Where will America's digital infrastructure live — and who gets to decide?
Long-form, data-driven reporting on the city halls and zoning committees that shape American life. Every story starts with data — Hamlet’s platform processes transcripts, agendas, and roll-call records from city council meetings across more than 3,000 jurisdictions. Our team finds patterns that would be impossible to uncover by hand.