After years of playing second fiddle to the suburban areas around them, some — but not all — of the Hudson Valley’s urban centers are to some degree thriving again, though not by doing what they used to do.

New innovations in solar panels and the grid come to the Hudson Valley.

Everyone knows places like NYC and San Francisco are doing well, but a recent analysis concluded that all the income gains are eaten up by cost of living.

Maybe it’s already time to be talking not about too little water but too much — the more common condition in the New York City reservoir system in springtime.

As political scientist Robert Putnam, author of the turn-of-the-21st-century classic Bowling Alone, America’s Declining Social Capital, expressed it, “If we can get more people engaged in community life in contexts that respect American pluralism, many of our other problems —to begin with, our politics — will be different.” Walter Maxwell lived that belief. Walter got it. Walter lives.

One of the ways to do so has been somehow to create one’s own job. Though that’s a tough road, thousands of people have tried to do it, combining their creative skills, business acumen, imagination and not a little tenacity.

In the past two years, Start-Up New York has fallen woefully short of expectations, while the other state programs picking the economic-development winners have had a mixed record. Meanwhile, the modest UVANY network, which has scored its successes and failures without direct governmental funding, continues to enlarge its constituency.