While we debate about parades and memos and other political maelstroms, Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker argues that one of the greatest developments of the past 30 years goes largely unnoticed: the dramatic declines in urban crime across the country. The result? Revitalized cities, soaring real-estate prices, and greater opportunity, particularly for communities of color who were most victimized by high crime. On the flip side, harsher policing and mass incarceration are byproducts of a tough-on-crime approach that persists through political will even as the social need for crime prevention has become, city-by-city and year-by-year, ever less acute.