Starting Conversations with Public Art
An arts collaboration comes up with a creative spark to facilitate discussions about neighborhood change.
Fighting Displacement Fights Crime
There's an utterly fascinating recent post by John Roman on the Metrotrends Blog of the Urban Institute called “Gentrification Will...
Myths and Realities About Cycles: Avoiding the Inevitability Trap
About a year ago I wrote a post about Paul Krugman and whether building luxury housing could mitigate the...
Transforming Vacant Land Into Community Assets
Vacant land activities can be low cost and high impact; the price of failure is not steep, but the return on investment can be high.
Seattle Neighborhood Planning
At first glance, the Neighborhood Planning Program in Seattle, Washington, sounds like a remarkably progressive idea. Begun in 1995, the program is one of...
Help Restore Post-Katrina NOLA Neighborhoods by Tearing Down the Freeway
As we reflect on the five years that have passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we can observe both progress and much, much...
An Urban School Reduces Violence . . . With Nonviolence
When students feel like they are in jail when at school and the adults around them consider them all potential...
In Atlantic City, the Legacy of Segregation and Redlining Endures
The legacy of racist housing policy shapes—and disempowers—Black, largely urban, neighborhoods to this day, and can be seen in places like the Northside neighborhood of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Core and Periphery: “Trading Places”?
In a cover story for the latest issue of The New Republic, Governing Magazine editor Alan Ehrenhalt proclaims that the American city has reinvented...
Claiming Space
Community-driven art projects are helping to define and reshape neighborhood spaces in Philadelphia.
Why Can’t Harlem Stop Gentrification?
In his May New York Times editorial, “The End of Black Harlem,” Michael Henry Adams portrays the historic African-American...
Gentrification in Brooklyn the Result of Plans, Not Markets
Doug Henwood, editor/publisher of Left Business Observer, has an interesting piece in the Nation this week that argues that gentrification and displacement in New...
Down and Out in the Big Easy
“Homeless outreach!” calls out Mike Miller as he ducks through a busted wall to climb the steps of an abandoned house in New Orleans’...
NOLA Brings a Holistic Focus to Resilience
Cities cannot weather the effects of climate change without going beyond infrastructure to address institutional racism, historical inequities, and access to physical and mental health services.
Data Systems for Social Change
Throughout Chinatown Community Development Center’s 39-year history in San Francisco, we have grown to encompass multiple strategies in our quest for comprehensive community development....
Where Community Is at Work Making Itself
Creating and proctecting third places in low-income communities. A conversation with May Louie, Neeraj Mehta, Ken Reardon, and Chuck Wolfe.
How Immigrants Are Revitalizing America’s Fading Suburbs
The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn, has an interesting new post about how American suburbs, particularly inner-ring suburbs, are being revitalized by immigrant populations. His...
A Community Benefits Proposal Is Ignored. Is Displacement Far Behind?
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.
Community Development and School Reform: Odd Bedfellows?
In my couple decades hanging around the community development field, I can’t count the number of times conversations about...
Gentrification and Public Schools: It’s Complicated
An influx of more affluent families and their resources and advocacy is just what every struggling school needs, right? Well . . .