Tag: Cities

Jonathan Levy

The Localist

Why did Chicago become the headquarters of free market fundamentalism? Adam Smith offers a clue.

J.T. Roane, N’Kosi Oates

A Black Geography of the City

N'Kosi Oates speaks with J.T. Roane about Philadelphia's spatial politics and resistance to racial containment.

David S. Jones

Killer Heat Waves Are Coming

But awareness alone won't solve the problem. Here's what we should do.

Timothy Weaver

The False Promise of Opportunity Zones

Tax breaks for investors don’t help poor communities.

AbdouMaliq Simone

Improvising Urban Futures

The vast hinterlands of the Global South’s cities are generating new solidarities and ideas of what counts as a life worth living.

Oliver Bullough, Daniel Penny

How London Became a Playground for Putin’s Oligarchs

For decades, UK-based financial institutions have exploited loopholes to subvert regulations and shield the wealthy from scrutiny.

Nate File

Detroiters Are Not Waiting to Be Saved

Inspired by the work of James and Grace Lee Boggs, many young Detroit activists are turning to forms of mutual aid to meet the needs of their communities.

Randall Horton

The Protagonist in Someone Else’s Memoir

Every city I’ve lived in has been filled with racism, whether out in the open or hidden in an invisible dialogue of economics and housing. Birmingham taught me to never question what it meant to be a Black American.

Celina Su

Budgeting Justice

Cities must empower historically marginalized communities to shape how public funds are spent.

David McDermott Hughes

Sunlight as Infrastructure

Sunlight-friendly architecture could heat and illuminate buildings without expending any electricity.

Joseph Margulies

A Path to Neighborhood Power

Well-meaning nonprofits don’t go far enough in the fight against gentrification. Residents themselves must be in charge, and neighborhood trusts point the way.

Danielle Sered, Amanda Alexander

Making Communities Safe, Without the Police

Effective responses to violence—preventing it, interrupting it, holding people accountable, and helping people heal—already exist. We need to learn from and invest in them.

Dan Breznitz

What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about Innovation

To generate local, inclusive prosperity, cities must think beyond tech accelerators and science parks and instead embrace a wider range of innovation strategies.

October 21, 2021

Jonathan M. Metzl

The Supreme Court Is Poised to Put Politics Ahead of Gun-Violence Prevention

New York State Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen may give the right—and its politics of racial resentment—a major win, but at the cost of gun control laws known to prevent shootings.

Michael Gecan

How Not to Fix Gentrification

The community development industry has failed in the fight for fair housing. Despite claiming to involve residents, power and self-interest still have the final say.

Derecka Purnell, Elizabeth Hinton

Reclaiming the Power of Rebellion

Activist Derecka Purnell interviews historian Elizabeth Hinton about her new book, America on Fire, and how the label “riot” discredits Black political demands.

Matthew D. Lassiter

Police and the License to Kill

Detroit police killed hundreds of unarmed Blacks in response to the civil rights movement. Their ability to get away with it reveals why most of today’s proposals to make police more accountable are bound to fail, and how we can do better.

Michael Brenes

Police Reform Doesn’t Work

A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis supports the view that none of the city council’s current proposals will prevent there from being another George Floyd.

David McDermott Hughes

Use Sunlight Locally (or Lose It)

A new “solar homesteading law” could harness rays of sun that fall on roofs and parking lots in cities and advance the aims of energy democracy.

Robin D. G. Kelley

Getting to Freedom City

As a culture of protest took hold in 1960s LA, communities of color also prioritized a radical tradition of care, emphasizing mutual aid, community control, and the transformative power of art and politics.

Brent Cebul

Tearing Down Black America

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. In the mid-twentieth century, city governments, backed by federal money, demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

Walter Johnson

The Revolution at the Gate

Photos of Mark and Patricia McCloskey waving guns at St. Louis Black Lives Matter protesters became instantly iconic. But the McCloskeys are also only a symptom of how racism is served by private property.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Accept Nothing Less Than Police Abolition

As post-Katrina New Orleans illustrates, even ambitious attempts to reform police leave intact the structures of racial violence. Worse yet, such efforts drain public money that could instead have been invested in caring for communities.

Joseph J. Fischel

In the Fight for Policing Reform, LGBT Is a Threadbare Alliance

Pride festivities attempt every year to reinforce the idea of an LGBT community, but when it comes to views on policing, white gay men and trans women of color often have little in common.

Clare O’Connor, AK Thompson

The Politics of the Mask

Today we face the paradox of states simultaneously criminalizing masks—because of protests—and mandating them because of COVID-19. In this interview, social theorist AK Thompson explores the history of masks in protests and why rioting is politically effective.

Poetry

Kiese Laymon

And Blue

Elizabeth Hinton

The Minneapolis Uprising in Context

A proper understanding of urban rebellion depends on our ability to interpret it not as a wave of criminality, but as political violence.

Jean Lin, Aaron Horvath

How Civic Organizations Are Helping to Fight COVID-19

Nonprofits have proven to be critical links in the nation’s public health infrastructure, but even those with mandates unrelated to health and poverty relief are turning out to be integral to their communities’ survival.

Jamala Rogers, Jason Q. Purnell, Walter Johnson, Colin Gordon

COVID-19 and the Color Line

Black Americans are dying of COVID-19 at much higher rates than whites, and nowhere more so than in St. Louis. This is the result of racist policies which collapsed the social safety net while setting blacks in the path of danger.

Mordecai Lyon

Should There Be a COVID-19 Rent Strike?

While the government and some banks have announced mortgage moratoriums, they have not insisted that rent relief be passed on to tenants. Many renters don’t know what they will do come April 1, let alone May 1.

Calista McRae

The Bird at the Window

Since 1970 North America has lost 29 percent of its bird population. New York City alone kills almost a quarter of a million birds each year. More than most people, poets have tried to respond to these unremarked—and mostly preventable—deaths.

Michael Gecan

How Not to Do Activism

The calculus of power isn’t defined by hits or clicks or tweets. It is measured in relationships and meaningful reactions over time.

Paul Hockenos

Zero Hour: The First Days of New Berlin

30 years after the Wall, the story of Berlin's anarchist utopia.

Mordecai Lyon, Tef Poe, Walter Johnson

The Revolutionary and the Historian

Harvard professor Walter Johnson and rapper Tef Poe reflect on their shared activism, and the place they see for allies—accomplices, even—in the long struggle for racial justice.

Pedro A. Regalado, Salonee Bhaman

Homes for Citizens

New York public housing is plagued with problems, but it possesses a democratic advantage that voucher systems lack: residents can hold the state accountable not only as tenants but as constituents.

Killing the Commons

Ruth Miller

The Sins of “Smart” Cities

What happens when we reframe complex social and political issues as technical puzzles? Two new books challenge modern cities' over-reliance on data and technology.

Jae Won Chung

Dystopia Is Everywhere

Hye-young Pyun’s surreal, violent novels reject stereotypes about Korean women’s writing, taking up global themes of environmental collapse and the loneliness of city life.