urban history

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  1/3/2021
  

  A Blueprint for Leadership from 1980s Chicago

  by Brentin Mock

  Harold Washington faced stiff resistance from his own party when he became Chicago's first Black mayor in 1983; his response stressing public infrastructure and voting rights foreshadowed the Biden administration's efforts to overcome intransigence and obstructionism. 

• 
• SOURCE: Teen Vogue
  12/31/2021
  

  The DC Punk Scene Relied on the Local Latinx Community

  by Mike Amezcua

  "A big piece is missing from the stories told about punk and hardcore in the 1980s: Primarily, that marginalized spaces and communities in urban America gave a stage to the predominantly white subculture."

• 
• SOURCE: DCist
  12/30/2021
  

  Mosaic Theater Is Collecting H Street Residents’ Protest Stories And Turning Them Into Plays

  “We want to be a place where the stories of our community are uplifted and celebrated and given the spotlight — particularly because so many of those residents are African Americans who have seen so much change happen without their input,” says Reginald Douglas, Mosaic’s new artistic director.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/4/2022
  

  Private Capital Strangled Our Cities (Review of Destin Jenkins)

  by Samuel Zipp

  Destin Jenkins's new book makes a case that metropolitan segregation and racial inequality trace back to cities' dependence on the bond market. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  12/15/2021
  

  Puerto Rican History Deserves More than a Mural

  by Jacqueline Lazú

  Instead of rehashing "West Side Story," Hollywood should tell the story of Chicago's Young Lords Organization. 

• 
• SOURCE: 10TampaBay
  12/12/2021
  

  USF's Aisha Durham Part of Smithsonian Curation Team for Anthology of Hip Hop and Rap

  Communications Professor Aisha Durham visited the Smithsonian as a young girl from Virginia, and felt like her African American peers were outsiders to American culture. She now works to highlight the ways that urban Black culture changed America through music, fashion, and other elements of hip hop culture. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  12/13/2021
  

  Preservationists Want to Save Penn Station. Yes, That Penn Station.

  by Kriston Capps

  The one thing every New Yorker can agree on is that Penn Station is terrible. Why is this benighted hellhole being championed for historic preservation? 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  12/13/2021
  

  Public Thinker: Destin Jenkins on Breaking Bonds

  by Hannah Appel

  "As your work so powerfully shows, the municipal bond market structures racial privilege, entrenches spatial neglect, and distributes wealth and power. American cities are dependent on financiers, rating agencies, and bond markets for nearly everything."

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  12/8/2021
  

  Rise And Fall Of A Movement — A Review Of “The Young Lords: A Radical History”

  by Leo Valdes

  Johanna Fernandez's history of the Puerto Rican activist organization reconstructs the movement's roots and shows that an organization formed in 1969 still offers a useful diagnosis of an "urban crisis" rooted in experiences in housing, schools, hospitals, and jails. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  11/29/2021
  

  New Book Revisits the Debate over NYC's Iconic Subway Maps

  For fans of transit cartography, the New York Subway Map Debate of April 20, 1978, is remembered as a legendary showdown between two irreconcilable approaches.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  11/17/2021
  

  Unenforceable Racial Covenants are Still Part of Property Deeds Across America

  "I'd be surprised to find any city that did not have restrictive covenants," said LaDale Winling, a historian and expert on housing discrimination who teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

• 
• SOURCE: Vice
  11/11/2021
  

  America's Only LGBTQ Historic District Is Falling Apart

  "Because of centuries of general anti-gay sentiment and laws punishing queerness, little queer history has been preserved, and much of it has been erased."

• 
• SOURCE: Washingtonian
  11/10/2021
  

  What You Think You Know About DC's Metro Skipping Georgetown is Wrong

  by Luke Mullins

  Zachary Schrag, author of the definitive book on the DC Metro system, says that the legend of affluent community opposition in the 1960s is a just-so story that ignores the realities transit planners faced, but does jibe with city residents' sense of issues of race, power, and influence. 

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  11/10/2021
  

  "The Ivory Tower is Dead": An Interview with Davarian Baldwin

  Davarian L. Baldwin's work interrogates how universities in postindustrial cities exemplify new models of economic development and are implicated in the problems of labor exploitation, gentrification and inequality. 

• 
• 11/7/2021
  

  Historically, Black Distrust of Police is About More than Acts of Violence

  by Christopher Hayes

  The Harlem rebellion against the NYPD in July 1964 was sparked by a police killing of a teenager (and a grand jury's refusal to indict him), but reflected the role of the police in maintaining a profoundly unequal social order that affected everyday life in Black neighborhoods, a situation that has changed little. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  11/5/2021
  

  Where Did the Public Toilets Go?

  Peter Baldwin offers context for how American cities haltingly adopted and quickly abandoned public toilets, a story that encompasses the racial, gender and class politics of how people interact in urban space. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/29/2021
  

  Another Buffalo Was Possible

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  India Walton seemed on track to become the first Black woman mayor in Buffalo, and the first socialist to lead a major city in decades. The sitting mayor rallied to defeat her, but we should still consider the possibility of more liberatory politics. 

• 
• SOURCE: Platform
  11/1/2021
  

  How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining

  by Todd Michney and LaDale Winling

  Richard T. Ely and his student Ernest McKinley Fisher pushed the National Association of Real Estate Boards to adopt "the unsupported hypothesis that Black people's very presence inexorably lowered property values," tying the private real estate industry to racial segregation. 

• 
• SOURCE: Deadline
  10/26/2021
  

  Detroit Bankruptcy Documentary Wins Library of Congress Prize

  Ken Burns, who collaborated with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on the selection, called "Gradually, Then Suddenly" a "complex, nuanced, layered" examination of the city's financial crisis and the political divide between Detroit and the state of Michigan. 

• 
• SOURCE: Crosscut
  10/15/2021
  

  Beware "Rising Crime" Rhetoric in Seattle Politics

  by Dan Berger

  Progressive prosecutor candidates like Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in Seattle reflect a growing social movement to reverse decades of failed "tough on crime" policies that have accomplished little but swell the ranks fo the incarcerated, says a historian of crime and punishment.