This article is one of a series of articles offering energy advice to President Obama and his administration.

Dear President Obama,

In many ways, you are the first modern urban president, and I would like you to embrace this throughout your Presidency in your policies and your public image. Instead of living on a ranch or an unattached suburban house, you chose to live in a townhouse in a dense, diverse and mixed use area of a thriving metropolis. You’ve also lived in Cambridge Mass., New York and now Washington DC, three walkable cities with good mass transit and mixed use development.

You’ve also visited countless small towns in southern Illinois in your run for the Senate and later throughout the country in your run for the Presidency. These cities and small towns helped shape your world views. You have seen the mix of the impoverished with the working and middle class as well as the wealthy elites all within a few square miles. You’ve seen cities and small towns at their best and at their worst. You've walked down thriving main streets and dead ones.

Your electoral victory in many ways was based on your ability to rack-up large majorities in our nation’s more urban areas, even Omaha where you snagged an unprecedented extra electoral vote from Nebraska. And your success as a President, in reviving the nation’s economy, making our society more environmentally sustainable and reducing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, will largely rest on the success or failure of your urban and small town agenda.