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.
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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.
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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”.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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