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.
Read the full story →The most recent dispatches.
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.
The Most Deliberative Square Mile in America
461 meetings. Five governing bodies. 9.3 million words. Everything Piedmont said in six years — every committee, every debate, every decision.
The Bill Comes Due
108,394 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.
Every city we’ve covered.
2026
- 01Boulder 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
- 02Lamorinda, 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
- 03Piedmont, 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
- 04Pittsburgh, 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
- 05Austin, 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
- 06Ann 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
- 07San 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
- 08Oakland, 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 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.