urban history

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/27/2022
  

  Recovering the Story of the Black Men who were the Nation's First Paramedics

  In Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1960s, a group of Black men from a neighborhood where many were considered unemployable revolutionized emergency medical response. But the story of Freedom House has been suppressed. 

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• SOURCE: Noema
  9/22/2022
  

  The Lost Art of Maintenance

  The struggles of the New York transit system to preserve the useful life of its train cars, and to prevent problems before they occur, reflects deep and troubling changes in society's relationship to infrastructure and labor power. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/8/2022
  

  Mr. Biden, Tear Down this Highway

  It's time to stop expanding the urban highways that divide communities, perpetuate racial segregation and harm health, and to consider removing them entirely, argues one architectural designer. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/6/2022
  

  What's Causing a Half Century of "Black Flight"?

  Despite political rhetoric from some quarters, suburbanization has been undermining the association of Black America with central cities – in large part because of the disinvestment and abandonment of urban communities. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/4/2022
  

  Landmark Building Embodies Past and Present of DC's Black Community

  The True Reformer Building in Washington is likely the first in the nation to be designed, funded, built and owned by African Americans as part of a comprehensive mission of economic and social self-reliance and uplift in the early 20th century. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  8/25/2022
  

  The Democratic Possibilities of Cruising

  by Jack Parlett

  As a practice, cruising exemplifies the possibilities of urban culture by bringing people into contact with strangers and enabling them to recognize common desires. The history of crusing shows it's not just about sex, but about democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/24/2022
  

  Are Co-Ops the Lost Solution to the Housing Crisis?

  by Annemarie Sammartino

  At its 1966 opening, New York's Co-Op City was heralded as the solution to the nation's affordable housing crisis. What went right, what went wrong, and can it help guide better housing policy today?

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  8/17/2022
  

  Documentary Shows the Choices that Led to Deadly Streets

  Blaming distraction—by drivers, pedestrians or cyclists—for climbing road fatalities is a cop-out, says Jennifer Boyd. Americans need to be willing to question the basic design of roads and the priority they give to moving cars fast if they are serious about reducing road deaths. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  8/15/2022
  

  The Modern City was Shaped by Policing Black Women's Sexuality

  by Simon Balto

  In tribute to the work of Anne Gray Fischer, a historian of policing reflect on how central the goal of controlling sexuality was to the growth of police forces and the geography of urban America. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington CityPaper
  8/11/2022
  

  A Lost Archive of DC Life at Midcentury

  Rescued from a dumpster minutes before the arrival of the garbage truck, Ray Honda's photographs captured DC at the dawn of the civil rights era and the vibrant Black culture of the city. 

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• SOURCE: Post45
  8/8/2022
  

  Noir Politics in Mike Davis's "City of Quartz"

  by Charlotte Rosen

  The late Mike Davis wrote his influential and controversial history of Los Angeles as a noir thriller, exposing the greed and corruption beneath the sunny surface. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  7/5/2022
  

  The Walls of Troy: Pandemic and Exclusion at an Urban University

  by Arabella Delgado

  The pandemic has clarified and underscored ways that the University of Southern California, like most private urban campuses, has long sought to maximize the separation between its campus and the surrounding community. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.