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This story was nothing to sneeze at...

I'm happy to say that I’ve survived a few days in Mexico City and have none of the symptoms of swine flu. One thing however does feel different; how unconsciously alert I am to my own body and all sorts of warning signs/hazardous behaviors around me. Perhaps it is just a case of biological adaptation to increase your chances of survival in more dangerous environments (if anyone has research on that - please do send my way) or it is a layer of your subconscious that just heightens your peripheral awareness under changing circumstances, but it is oddly cool.

When our producer on the ground welcomed my outstretched hand at the airport with a warning that hand shakes should be avoided, that is when the story started to sink in. Saturday evening when I sneezed at a restaurant and people three tables over turned to look, it sunk in a little deeper.

By the time I woke up on Sunday, my body had gone into this state of being. I noticed a man coughing as he walked into the elevator and instinctively pressed the button with a knuckle instead of a fingertip. I didn’t touch the handrails on the way down to the lobby. I took notice of the doorman who sneezed and oddly I searched for him the next couple of days to make sure he still seemed healthy. I washed my hands far more often, became conscious of otherwise unconscious actions like how many times my fingers touched my eyes to relieve an itch(eight times since landing) or how many times I had coughed (three) or sneezed (seven) over the past few days.

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Seth Doane is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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There is no way to avoid the news of our struggling economy. For months in our series “The Other America” we’ve been chronicling the tough time that Americans are having as they try to pay their bills and juggle responsibilities. So, when our LA Bureau Chief pointed to a story about the tent city that sprung up in Reno, Nevada, we knew that it was something we should look into.

This spring, right in the middle of downtown Reno, a tent city started to crop up. It started with just a few tents scattered along the railway tracks. But as more people started to set up camp the city decided they needed to organize the tents, establish some rules, and provide what services they could. Now, roughly 170 people call this “tent city” home.

Organizers say that the people living here are a combination of the chronically homeless and the “newly” homeless. One city official suggested that it was roughly a 50-50 mix (chronically homeless vs. newly homeless) but that an exact number was hard to determine. The so-called “newly” homeless are recent casualties of this tough economy. These are folks who were living paycheck to paycheck and may have lost their jobs or had expenses that became too costly to bear. Many of the people living in tent city are looking for work but cannot find it. Others are working but not making enough to move out of a tent.

In our story on the Evening News, you'll meet ...

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In case you haven't heard, "Sex and the City" opens this weekend in theaters across America. There's been so much hype for this summer movie that one magazine's cover featured the four stars with duct tape across their mouths. It was an attempt to say "enough already."

But there's a reason why that HBO show has resonated with so many people. For my thoughts, just click on the monitor.

At a time when American cities are changing so rapidly--both as centers of our society, as a launch pads for escape to suburbs and exurbs--I thought I'd consult with the man who may be the country's leading expert on urban life, Joel Kotkin, author and Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He’s the subject of this week’s 10 Questions. We talked about the problem with trendiness in cities, what it takes to make a well-managed city, and why sustaining the middle class is so important.

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1. Mr. Kotkin, your book, "The City: A Global History," distills the essence of why cities were created-and what they are meant to accomplish-in about 200 pages. So here's the most basic question: how do you define a city-and what is it there for?

A city is a place that is more than a village or town. It provides all the essential needs, and also tends to have a strong sense of identity and purpose. In our expanding urbanized world, more and more places -- even small towns and some suburbs -- are becoming more like cities, particularly with the internet.

2. You've long criticized the middle class leaving cities for suburbs and exurbs-and leaving only the super-rich and poor in their place. What does it take for the middle class to stay in a city-and why is it so vital that they be there?

The middle class is the ballast that holds cities together. It allows for the broadest spectrum of employment and services. Keeping it in some cities will be difficult due to high housing prices and bifurcated job markets; in other cities, it's still safety and lack of opportunity. Almost everywhere it's schools. Economy, schools, safety are the keys to retaining a strong middle class.

3. What cities are putting forward the right policies to help make the middle class stay? Are there "best practices" that other cities could learn from?...

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . .”
– The opening lines of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the first installment of which was published on this date in 1859.

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