Another new law allows the president to transfer the powers and resources of local government to socialist communes, potentially neutering the opposition's electoral victories in many big cities in 2008.
The country which has taken this furthest is the United States, where the prison population has quadrupled over the past three decades to 1.6m, and where crime rates have recently been falling in many big cities.
The number of serious crimes fell by 25% last year not as dramatic a reduction as in New York, but more than in many other big cities.
But the statistic helps encapsulate New York's rebound from a decline that began after World War II and hit a nadir in the 1970s here and in many other big American cities.
In the big cities many people are already leading the sort of lives that have brought down fertility in richer countries.
As I've argued before, that low limit unfairly precludes many nonwealthy couples in big cities from converting their old iras to a Roth.
That's particularly important in potential new stores in big cities and upscale suburbia, where many customers place as much emphasis on wide aisles and clean bathrooms as they do on low prices.
Despite a burgeoning gay scene in India's big cities, many Indian homosexuals worry more about exposure to their families and colleagues than about the law.
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Nike began expanding its operational reach in China about 30 years ago, ahead of many of the glut of Western brands that flooded the big cities in line with a rising middle class and consumer culture.
Many minority communities -- whether in big cities or rural towns -- had seen businesses and opportunities vanish for years, stores boarded up, young people hanging out on the street corners without prospects for the future.
The trend hit a fever pitch in the 1970s, when New York and many other big cities saw their populations drop by 10 percent or more.
And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This could make life very expensive in big cities like the the capital, where many residents already work two jobs to cover their living costs.
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Belying their stuffy images, the streets of many market towns are now meaner than those in big cities, which tend to be policed by large forces.
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As big cities have welcomed growth in their centres, many small towns have resisted it.
While many American kids simply attend their neighborhood high school, eighth graders in big cities like New York face a staggering number of choices.
Symphony orchestras in other big cities are feeling similar constraints, as the economic downturn hurt many endowments and donations even as costs kept rising, said Robert Flanagan, a Stanford University economist who has written a book about symphony finances.
Tennis courts and academies are sprouting up in many Chinese cities, attracting youths who aspire to become the country's next big stars.
Ukraine is still home to half a million Jews, and in big cities with livelier economies, such as Kiev, the capital, many are staying.
The results of an internal government poll in big and medium-sized cities suggest that he could win twice as many votes in these places as Mr Ahmadinejad.
One who is sceptical is Gustavo Franco, a former central-bank president, who points out that many states and cities still have big hidden liabilities, for example, in their pension schemes.
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Families are close, but there's little work, so many people spend as long as two years away from home in the sweatshops of big Asian cities or in the construction sites of the Persian Gulf.
But the demographic challenges of the Big Orange and the Windy City pale compared to those faced by many cities in the old industrial Rust Belt, which have either lost population or posted only weak increases.
The Big Issue magazine, now a traditional feature of the High Street in many of the UK's major cities, is going digital.
Like many of his peers, Zhou stumbled upon golf when he left his hometown to pursue a better life in the big cities.
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