By Robert Watkins
News Flash! If you are a dog or cat and can choose your birth state, you might want to avoid Alabama — no matter how cutely you wag your tail, shake hands with your paw, or roll over on command.
Alabama has a problem that most people don’t know about. Continue reading Alabama Quietly Killing Thousands of Dogs and Cats. Here’s What We’re Doing in Birmingham to Save Them
Editor’s note: I don’t do this often. But when we lost J. Mason Davis on April 24, I knew I had to bring back one of the most remarkable pieces ever published on ComebackTown — because it deserves to be read again, and because the man who wrote it deserves to be remembered.
Read it as a tribute to a man who wasn’t afraid to tell the truth — and as a reminder that honest voices, once gone, leave a silence that’s hard to fill. Continue reading Alabama Tried to get Rid of this Birmingham Man, It Didn’t Work
By Steve Ammons
Economic competition today doesn’t happen city by city.
It happens region against region.
Companies evaluating where to invest aren’t comparing one municipality to another.
They’re comparing metropolitan areas, looking at workforce size, infrastructure, talent pipelines, quality of life, and economic momentum. In other words, they’re evaluating regions. Continue reading Why Birmingham’s Economic Future Depends on Regional Alignment
By Steve Alexander.
If you haven’t visited Five Points South lately, you’ll be amazed with what you see.
Gone is the graffiti.
Clean and Safe ambassadors patrol the district.
There are no encampments in the park.
The unhoused are being proactively connected to the
services they need.
Five Points South is re-emerging right before my eyes.
Continue reading A New Five Points South Is Emerging Right Before My Eyes
By Tony Tamburello
Birmingham has changed dramatically in my lifetime.
Downtown revitalization, mixed-use development, and reinvestment have turned stagnant areas into hubs of activity. Much of this progress comes not from flashy reinvention but from undoing past mistakes that pushed people away. Continue reading Your Parents Abandoned Birmingham. Will You?
By Jacob Gordon
I’m so proud of Birmingham. And you should be too.
We often take our most positive attributes for granted. Year after year, Birmingham is recognized as one of the most generous cities in the U.S. Continue reading How Does Birmingham Do It? One of the Most Generous Cities in America
By Chip Reed
Bet you never expected to see a new 30,000-square-foot building rising downtown!
If you’ve driven west on 6th Ave North lately, you may have noticed a construction project at 6th and 22nd Street. Continue reading The new downtown building that will change how our kids think about Birmingham
By Austin Senseman
AI is going to be disruptive.
Be prepared for the disorder and churn.
No one really knows what’s going to happen.
But out of chaos comes opportunity.
That’s why this is such an important moment for Birmingham. Continue reading Birmingham, the disruption is coming whether we’re ready or not
By Reed Baskin, M.D.
Editor’s note: It’s often insightful to read what is published about Birmingham in media outside of Birmingham. This piece was published by Doug Martinson last month in Huntsville on al.com under the same title.
Doug Martinson: “I was in Birmingham recently, and when our Uber driver asked where we were from, she talked about all the jobs in Huntsville and how Huntsville kept gaining population while Birmingham was losing population. Continue reading Nashville’s gain was Memphis’ loss. What Birmingham and Huntsville can learn
By Blake Guthrie
Editor’s note: This column, authored by Blake Guthrie, appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on November 9, 2025.
When he emailed permission to publish, he wrote this personal note to me…
“I have a lifelong love/hate relationship with Birmingham. Having grown up there, all I wanted to do was get the hell out as a young man. Now, I love coming back and seeing all the changes in the right direction.” Continue reading My love/hate relationship with Birmingham