urban history

• 
• SOURCE: Governing
  6/16/2022
  

  A.K. Sandoval-Strausz: Did Latinos Save the American City?

  The historian argues that the "creative class" explanation for urban resurgence focuses on affluent white professionals while ignoring the role of Latino immigrants in revitalizing urban communities. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  6/15/2022
  

  The Right Celebrated Bernhard Goetz as the Kyle Rittenhouse of the 80s

  by Pia Beumer

  In the context of economic turmoil, urban crisis, and racial division, a broad swath of the American public made Goetz a heroic symbol of restored white masculinity after he shot four Black teens who asked him for money on the New York subway.

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg
  6/10/2022
  

  When Cities Put Up Monuments to Traffic Deaths

  by Peter Norton

  Rising pedestrian and cyclist deaths in American communities are a call to question the primacy of the automobile and stop accepting roadway carnage. 

• 
• SOURCE: KARE
  6/10/2022
  

  Exhibition Shows Ongoing Toll of Minneapolis Freeway Building

  "We are clearly critics of 35W and the freeway system but I drove on a freeway to get here so I'm not above this history and I think we're all culpable," project co-lead Dr. Greg Donofrio said.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  6/7/2022
  

  The Second Destruction of Tulsa's Black Community

  by Karlos K. Hill

  Photographer Donald Thompson has set out to capture a visual history of Tulsa's Greenwood district, an African American community decimated first by the 1921 race massacre and then by urban renewal in the 1970s. Historian Karlos Hill interviews him about his work. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/2/2022
  

  The Ideology of the Bicycle

  The bicycle since its invention has found itself at the center of debates about who public space is for. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/31/2022
  

  HBO's "We Own This City" and Baltimore's Long History of Police Brutality

  by Mary Rizzo

  A Baltimore historian notes that the Black community's efforts to fight police brutality are much older than the War on Drugs. 

• 
• 5/8/2022
  

  Confronting the Erasure of Native Americans in Early American Towns and Cities

  by Edward Rafferty

  Colin Calloway's book explores the presence of Native Americans in early American towns and cities, demolishing the longstanding myth that they vanished with the wilderness and highlighting indigenous critiques of the settler society. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/31/2022
  

  Los Angeles's Response to 1992 Riots Remains Model of How Not to Do It

  by V.N. Trinh

  The strategy of encouraging private business development, without seriously reforming police, fixing public schools, or addressing poverty, proved unequal to the task of promoting justice in LA. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington University Center for the Humanities
  4/25/2022
  

  René Esparza on AIDS and Health Inequality in Urban History

  A new book examines the relationship of sexuality, residential segregation, and class and racial inequality in the AIDS epidemic.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/2/2022
  

  Is Historic Preservation Ruining American Cities?

  by Jacob Anbinder

  Historic preservation laws often have a loose relationship to the actual historic significance of buildings, and an even looser relationship to the interests of cities in meeting their residents' social needs. 

• 
• 5/1/2022
  

  High Crimes and Lingering Consequences: How Land Sale Contracts Looted Black Wealth and Gutted Chicago Communities

  by Tiff Beatty

  Chicago artist Tonika Lewis Johnson is creating public installations documenting properties where Black residents were subjected to predatory contract home sales, and connecting the past to the present struggles of the city's south and west sides.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/19/2022
  

  The Unique Local and National Role of Washington's NAACP Chapter

  Derek Gray examined the growth of the capital city's NAACP chapter, the first in the nation to have Black leadership, and one with the unique responsibility to monitor legislation in Congress affecting civil rights and racial justice. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  4/21/2022
  

  Peter Algona: How Cities Became Accidental Wildlife Havens

  Algona's book traces the history of land use decisions that inadvertently allowed species, particularly the coyote, to spread across the United States even as the nation became more urbanized.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/19/2022
  

  "More Cops" is Not the Answer for NYC

  by Simon Balto

  The entire, terrifying episode that unfolded across 29 hours in New York was a testament to the futility of spending more money on police, and to the lie that police “keep us safe”. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/14/2022
  

  Rational or Not, Crime Fears Threaten the Subway with a Death Spiral

  Can studying past crime panics help cities convince riders to use mass transit systems when fear of crime is on the rise? 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/5/2022
  

  How the "Jewel of Harlem" Became Unlivable

  Opened in 1967, Esplanade Gardens’ co-op apartments were seen as a way for Black families to acquire intergenerational wealth and gnaw away at centuries-long inequality in housing.Then it started falling apart.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/4/2022
  

  2022's Labor Uprising Reminds of More Radical Past and Possible Future

  by Xochitl Gonzalez

  The Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers' Organization encouraged its college-educated members to take on industrial work to support a labor union movement in crisis; the moment encouraged a broader sense of who is a worker. Today, are workers in health, service, and logistics coming to a similar recognition? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  3/30/2022
  

  Historic Preservation and the Erasure of Women's History in Pittsburgh

  by David S. Rotenstein

  "Preservation is a fraught, power-laden process that reinforces racial, class, and gender biases. As old places become “historic,” they frequently get new names that are then inscribed upon space."

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  3/23/2022
  

  Planning For The People Y Qué? From Advocacy Planners To Hardcore Punks

  by Mike Amezcua

  "Punk fliers are planning documents. Not the official kind produced by city planning departments, of course, nor the grassroots plans by neighborhood activists resisting investment capital and gentrification. But these fliers contain a planning schema all the same."