By Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx

Recent events in cities such as Ferguson, Baltimore and New York have led to calls for a new national dialogue about race, class, criminal justice and opportunity. I do agree that we need a dialogue, but I also believe this dialogue should be rooted in action that seeks to turn the page on our history. One way we can start is by understanding and undoing mistakes that were made while designing our transportation system.

Some of these mistakes go back six decades to when we started building our nation’s interstate highway system. President Eisenhower’s…

Today’s Five Best Ideas, from the Aspen Institute:

1. What if to save the Earth, we need more energy and development, not less?
By Eric Holthaus in Slate

2. No big deal: Kids can now send their science experiments into space.
By Charley Locke in EdSurge

3. We basically know how to end — or at least stop the growth of — homelessness.
By Tim Henderson in Stateline

4. Soon, you could 3D-print your dinner.
By Heidi Ledford in Nature

5. Is this the technology that will finally give us flying cars?
By David Morris in Fortune

You can get these in your inbox each weekday at noon.

In my role as the editor and chief curator of the Aspen Institute Five Best Ideas of the Day, I’ve been closely monitoring the output of editorial pages, think tanks, blogs, newsletters, aggregators, journals and just about everything else for months. I have found profound and inspiring ideas from across the ideological spectrum about entrepreneurship, people’s health, the food we eat, the power of the public commons and how we teach our children. …