Keli A. Tianga

We heard about Ed Nakawatase and Tamio Wakayama’s experiences as volunteers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the American civil rights movement, and the extraordinariness of their witness to the history happening at the time compelled us to pursue a conversation.

However difficult, altering one’s viewpoint of a community is a crucial step, because creative placemaking’s overarching goal is to reach everyone where they are, and you can’t do that if you begin with a well thought-out plan in hand.

Community development corporations play an important role in community safety. As such, they are often at conflict with themselves over their relationships with the police and the communities they serve.

Four representatives of New York City organizations discuss their employment of art and artists to empower residents in the face of gentrification.

Some of us, myself included, are susceptible to the inaccurate thinking that when the arts are involved, the complications that can arise with traditional community building are lessened.

As extreme weather patterns in our country become less of an anomaly, the plight of people living in storm-prone places is of increasing concern. Emotional ties to place and family […]

We’ve written about municipalities and states going at it alone when federal funding was scarce, but there is promising news from some groups that are working on innovative financing mechanisms—and some that shift the focus from development to acquisition, which is often a stumbling block.

Residents of four historically African-American neighborhoods in Atlanta are in the midst of an occupation of Turner Field—the former home of the Atlanta Braves.

Black people were excluded from many of the income and wealth-building programs that helped build the foundation of white Americans’ wealth today.

For over 30 years, Broadway Housing Communities has developed its own formula for meeting the housing needs of West Harlem’s lowest-income residents. One of its unorthodox ingredients has been art galleries, and now, there’s a children’s museum in its newest building.

Advocates and organizers who deal with the needs of the poor often say it’s not really a housing/food/training issue, it’s an income issue. So what would happen if we just addressed income?

This Tuesday, advocates took to the microphone on the steps of Newark City Hall and spoke passionately about the city they love and their right to live there without threat […]