urban history

• 
• SOURCE: Vinepair
  

  Florence Revives Medieval Plague-Era ‘Wine Windows’ for Contactless Service

  In Florence, the need for bars and restaurants to serve food and drinks in a socially distanced manner has seen a medieval architectural oddity revived.

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  8/4/2020
  

  Let Us Drink in Public

  Many modern open container laws derive from previous “public drunkenness” and “vagrancy” ordinances that criminalized not just alcoholism, but also poverty and homelessness.

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  8/5/2020
  

  The Forgotten History of How Accessible Design Reshaped the Streets

  Long before the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 mandated curb cuts at all street corners, 30 years ago this summer, disabled people had pointed to the design of the street as a key locus of their political rights — the sidewalk that stands for being in public space, and therefore in the public sphere.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  8/5/2020
  

  Revolution on Trial: Looking back at New Haven's Black Panthers at 50

  The 50th anniversary of the polarising New Haven Nine trial has led to a group exhibition exploring racial injustice.

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  8/5/2020
  

  Urban Disaster And Recovery: An Overview And Bibliography Of The Resilient City

  "Different sorts of urban disasters—terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes, diseases—have elicited different responses, policy prescriptions, and behaviors." A bibliographical essay explains what cities have done and how historians have interpreted it. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/30/2020
  

  Why Trump’s Blunt Appeals to Suburban Voters May Not Work

  “[Nixon's campaigns] understood something about race that Trump doesn’t understand,” [Matthew] Lassiter said. “Voters don’t want racial privilege challenged, but they don’t want to be explicitly reminded that racism is underneath their position.”

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/27/2020
  

  How Police Unions Fight Reform

  Activists insist that police departments must change. For half a century, New York City’s P.B.A. has successfully resisted such demands.

• 
• SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
  7/27/2020
  

  Disinvestment in Black and Latino Chicago Neighborhoods is Rooted in Policy. Here’s how these Communities Continue to be Negatively Impacted.

  “When they were protesting in 1963, it was a desegregation protest but the things that people were chanting were like, ‘What do we want? Books! When do we want them? Now!’” said historian Elizabeth Todd-Breland.

• 
• SOURCE: Forbes
  7/27/2020
  

  Celebrating the 19th Amendment and the First Safe Haven Hostel for Women

  Hotel Figueroa in Los Angeles has served as a backdrop for some of the most challenging and memorable moments in American history, a representative of both the endurance of women and the City of Angels’ entrepreneurial, creative, and resilient spirit.

• 
• SOURCE: Jersey Digs
  7/24/2020
  

  Old Jail Could Inspire Youth to Stay Out of Prison — but Only If It Survives

  What better way to enshrine the lessons we’ve learned from decades of mass incarceration than by transforming the remnants of Newark’s first penitentiary into a gathering place — be it a museum or community center — that might bring about the end of a problematic legacy.

• 
• SOURCE: Hyperallergic
  7/22/2020
  

  Tenement Museum Lays Off 76 Workers, Including Entire Staff of Part-time Educators

  The museum estimates at least a 50% budget reduction for the coming year (the museum’s annual budget before COVID-19 was about $11 million) due to the losses of revenue caused by the pandemic.

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  7/22/2020
  

  Tearing Down Black America

  by Brent Cebul

  Ensuring that Black Lives Matter doesn't just require police reform. The history of urban renewal shows that governments have worked to dismantle and destabilize Black communities in the name of progress.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/23/2020
  

  Federal Forces Have Gone Into U.S. Cities Before. Why This Time Is Different

  “The idea of bringing in troops or law enforcement in its many forms to quell civilian protest is as American as apple pie — it is foundational to this nation,” said Heather Ann Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan.

• 
• SOURCE: Governing
  7/23/2020
  

  How Can Local Government Address Systemic Racism?

  Peniel Joseph, one of the nation’s leading civil rights scholars, has studied and written about the history of race and democracy. He has some ideas on how cities and urban areas can begin to dismantle racism.

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  7/22/2020
  

  When Conservatives Called To Freeze Police Budgets

  by David Helps

  Activists calling for defunding the police and increasing social services can ironically learn lessons from conservative Southern Californians who demanded "law and order secured on someone else’s dime."

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/20/2020
  

  After 50 Years, Sanitation Workers Still Fight for Dignity

  A determined handful of men in New Orleans carry on the cause Dr. King died defending in Memphis.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/10/2020
  

  Riots Long Ago, Luxury Living Today

  High-end development has transformed some Black neighborhoods decades after they were scarred by unrest. And not by coincidence.

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  7/5/2020
  

  MIT Professor Tunney Lee, an Architect, Urban Planner, and Historian of Chinatown, Dies at 88

  An architecture professor who taught at MIT and the Chinese University of Hong Kong is remembered as a historian of Chinese American community and an advocate for including the public in the process of planning.

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  7/7/2020
  

  A New Data Analysis Can Answer the Question "Do I Live in the Suburbs?"

  The U.S. hasn’t had a formal definition for what constitutes a suburb. A new data analysis comes closer to defining America’s most popular neighborhood type. 

• 
• 7/12/2020
  

  Centuries of Protest at City Hall Park

  by Marika Plater

  Closed gates around City Hall Park in New York not only restrict access to the park as a site for protest, but ignore the site's history as a theater for political expression.