Cities

When the Klan Came to Town

History reminds us that firm and sometimes violent opposition to racists is a time-honored American tradition.

  • Michael McCanne

The Last Man to Know Everything

The Marxist-environmental historian Mike Davis has produced a rich corpus critical of capitalism.

  • Troy Vettese

The Global Calculus of Climate Disaster

Global capitalism is no longer simply characterized by uneven development, it is characterized by uneven disaster.

  • Ashley Dawson

Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

A biography of Norman Bel Geddes, designer of the Futurama, tells the story of American innovation.

  • John Crowley

Back of the Yards

Lessons from a community organizer on building political power.

  • Michael Gecan

Unraveling the Silicon Valley Consensus

Startups aren’t the magic bullet for economic growth.

  • Ben Armstrong

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From “War on Crime” to War on the Black Community

The enduring impact of President Johnson’s crime commission.

  • Elizabeth Hinton

Reversal of Fortune

Cities are now playgrounds for the rich, with the poor forced into suburbs.

  • Claude S. Fischer

What the Kerner Report Got Wrong about Policing

Bad police were not simply a symptom of racism. They were often its agents.

  • Daniel Geary

Fifty Years Ago, the Government Said Black Lives Matter

The radical conclusions of the 1968 Kerner Report.

  • Julian E. Zelizer

A Vision in Concrete

Boston’s concrete modernist architecture is unsurpassed and widely despised.

  • Anthony Paletta

The Nation’s Mayor

Can Julián Castro Stop HUD's Wrecking Balls?

  • Edward G. Goetz

The Pacification of Rio, as Observed from a Gondola

Thanks to the teleférico, tourists can comfortably gawk at Brazil's poor.

  • Amy Moran-Thomas

Round and Round

A wheeling book of aspirations and frustrations, London: A History in Verse offers us a literary treasury: a record of the city, a roll of its events.

  • Lytton Smith

Names, Trains, and Corporate Deals

Why Public Transit Shouldn’t Sell Naming Rights

  • Frank Pasquale

Capitalism and the Urban Struggle

An Interview with David Harvey

  • David Harvey
  • David V. Johnson

The End of Nothing

Segregation Is Still a Problem in the United States

  • Ryan D. Enos

Urban Legends

It's time to rethink the concept of the "inner city."

  • William Rankin

Clear and Hold

The Return of the Urban Dreamscape—in Brooklyn

  • Casey Walker

Obama’s Chicago Tactics

The Chicago way of doing politics.

  • Michael Gecan

Every Last Drop

Managing our way out of the water crisis.

  • Frank R. Rijsberman

On Borrowed Time

Urban decline moves to the suburbs

  • Michael Gecan

Ending Urban Poverty: Neighborhood Matters

Do housing vouchers work?

  • Stefanie DeLuca

Ending Urban Poverty: The Inherited Ghetto

Understanding the persistence of racial inequality

  • Patrick Sharkey
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