urban history

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• 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.

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• 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. 

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• 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? 

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• 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."

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• 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."

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  3/22/2022
  

  Is "Regulation from Below" Possible? Historian Rebecca Marchiel on Community Housing Activism

  "Marchiel’s narrative paints the picture of a remarkably powerful national reinvestment campaign against an almost unstoppable force of ever more inventive flows of capital. Perhaps the lesson should have been that capitalism refuses to work for people."

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/17/2022
  

  Two Artists Unearth Hidden Histories of LA

  Devon Tsuno and Alan Nakagawa discuss the histories and daily life of the Japanese American community in Midtown Los Angeles, an area that has largely been erased from Angelenos' maps of their city. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  3/22/2022
  

  Black Mayors, Black Politics, and the Gary Convention

  by Brandon Stokes

  The National Black Political Convention of 1972 demonstrated that Black political power had been linked to urban governments, foreshadowing challenges of disinvestment, white flight, and exclusion from broader coalitions in national politics. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/16/2022
  

  Don't Use Anti-Asian Violence to Throw More Money at Police

  by Crystal Jing Luo

  Business interests in Oakland have hijacked the safety concerns of Asian Americans to support arming police in service of real estate development that threatens low-income housing. 

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  3/14/2022
  

  An Urbanist and Siege Survivor Says Ukraine's Cities are its Best Hope

  by Shlomo Angel

  "When a war becomes an urban war — when invaders move from open countryside to crowded streets — the advantages of size, air cover, or more sophisticated weaponry do not hold."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/15/2022
  

  Biden's Push for Infrastructure Can't Leave Black Communities Behind

  by N.D.B. Connolly

  When infrastructure programs drive growth politics, entrenched interests in banking, real estate and planning can profit from preserving and expanding racial inequality. 

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• SOURCE: Hyde Park Herald
  3/3/2022
  

  Chicago Landmarks Commission Authorizes $250,000 for Rehab of Muddy Waters's House

  The grant advances the renovation of the house on Chicago's south side for use as a museum and educational space.