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Boylston Street, Jamaica Plain, Boston, a residential street with a bike lane and a Black Lives Matter sign.

My Street Looks Different Now: Oral History and the Anti-Redlining Movement

For residents, organizers, and onlookers, neighborhoods can be a window for witnessing and making sense of history.
by Joshua Rosen via The Metropole on October 8, 2024
"Winter Scene in Brooklyn," 1820 painting by Francis Guy.

How Brooklyn’s Earliest Black Residents Found Empowerment and Solidarity in Their Diverse Community

The little known history of 19th-century New York City.
by Prithi Kanakamedala via Literary Hub on September 18, 2024
Black mother and son in front of their suburban house.

The Family Photographs That Helped Us Investigate How a University Displaced a Black Community

A longtime resident of Shoe Lane chronicled the life of his community as it was demolished by Christopher Newport University. His photographs helped a reporter seek accountability.
by Logan Jaffe via ProPublica on April 23, 2024
Girls reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Betty Smith Enchanted a Generation of Readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation.
by Rachel Gordan via The Conversation on February 27, 2024
Photo collage of L.J. Davis, Jervis Anderson, and a street map

The Invention of a Neighborhood

In the early years of Brooklyn’s gentrification, a 1977 New Yorker piece by Jervis Anderson captured the process in a freeze-frame.
by Jonathan Lethem via The New Yorker on August 21, 2023
Artists on the roof of 3-5 Coenties Slip, New York, 1958. Photograph: Hans Namuth

Remembering the Slip: The Manhattan Street that Birthed a Generation of Artists

The tiny downtown passage, where artists burned pallets for warmth, was home to Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin.
by Hannah Marriott via The Guardian on August 2, 2023
Side-by-side of LGBTQ+ pride flag above fetish shop, and local LGBTQ+ activist Roland Palencia

Searching For Silver Lake: The Radical Neighborhood That Changed Gay America

For decades, these Los Angeles streets have played host to key events in LGBTQ+ history. But gentrification has transformed the area.
by Lois Beckett via The Guardian on July 2, 2023
A sex worker on Cass Avenue, Detroit, 1965.

Red Lights, Blue Lines

Three recent books examine the discrimination and hypocrisy at the heart of policing “vice.”
by Sarah Schulman via New York Review of Books on March 3, 2023
Mexican American men standing near a mural and a low rider car in Chicago in 1987.

The Past and Future of Mexican Chicago

From the machine politicians in La Villita to the radicals in Pilsen, Mexican Chicagoans have played a central role in defining their city. 
by Juan Ignacio Mora via The Nation on January 10, 2023
Dancing crowds and a DJ at the 2022 Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, Washington

How the Block Party Became an Urban Phenomenon

“That spirit of community, which we all talk about as the roots of hip-hop, really originates in that block party concept.”
by Briana A. Thomas via Smithsonian on August 10, 2022
An Chang Ho, Kap Suk Cho and other workers at Riverside orange orchard, California USC Digital Library. Korean American Digital Archive.

The First Koreatown

Pachappa Camp, the first Korean-organized immigrant settlement in the United States, was established through the efforts of Ahn Chang Ho.
by Matthew Wills, Hannah Brown, Edward T. Chang via JSTOR Daily on May 27, 2022
People talking about a neighborhood map, from the cover of Claire Dunning's book "Nonprofit Neighborhoods."

Grantmaking as Governance

A new book examines how the US government funded the growth of — and delegated governance to — the nonprofit sector.
by Benjamin Soskis via Stanford Social Innovation Review on May 26, 2022
A woman tends to a lawn at the corner of Confederate Lane and Plantation Parkway in the Mosby Woods neighborhood of Fairfax on Wednesday. The city is considering changing several names in the Civil War-themed development, but neighbors are divided. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

A Civil War Among Neighbors Over Confederate-Themed Streets

Debates between neighbors escalate over the use of Confederate names within a Northern Virginia neighborhood.
by Antonio Olivo via Washington Post on May 15, 2022
Dancing at the spring festival at St. George in 1984.

'The World Was Ukrainian'

A stubborn and surprising immigrant enclave, hiding in plain sight on the Lower East Side.
by Christopher Bonanos via Curbed on April 11, 2022
Grid of black and white photos of various homes with different architectural styles.

Explore Milwaukee's History Through Its Many Home Styles

Interactive map shows Milwaukee’s housing patterns reflect not only aesthetic trends but also how historical events like immigration, war and civil rights shaped the city.
by Daphne Chen, Erin Caughey, Yuriko Schumacher via Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on April 1, 2022
Anita Villarreal with a campaigning Richard J. Daley

The US Arrested Her—Then She Changed Chicago

In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.
by Mike Amezcua via Public Books on February 28, 2022
Screen capture of a Black man standing in an urban residential neighborhood, speaking in the documentary "Who Killed the Fourth Ward?"

How “Who Killed Fourth Ward?” Challenged the Nature of Documentary Filmmaking

James Blue’s film investigated the destruction of a Black neighborhood in Houston, but it is also a powerful self-interrogation.
by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on January 21, 2022
Janet Robinson and Yolanda Grayson King inside Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church

In Virginia, a Historic Black Neighborhood Grapples With Whether to Grow

Some in The Settlement, founded by formerly enslaved people, say development should be allowed to create generational Black wealth while others disagree.
by Antonio Olivo via Washington Post on July 18, 2021

Redlining, Race, and the Color of Money

Long after the end of explicit discrimination in the housing market, the federal government continued to manage risk for capital, perpetuating inequality.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Dissent on July 8, 2021
Map of Oberlin Village in Raleigh, NC.

Vanishing Neighborhoods

The fate of Raleigh's 11 missing freedman's villages.
by Heather Leah via WRAL on January 21, 2021
Image of street corner in the Bronx, New York

Boroughed Time

Confronting a long tradition of projecting fantasies onto the South Bronx.
by Sasha Frere-Jones via Bookforum on September 3, 2020

The Long Reinvention of the South Bronx

Peter L'Official on the Mythologies Behind Urban Renewal.
by Peter L'Official via Literary Hub on August 3, 2020

Racist Housing Practices From The 1930s Linked To Hotter Neighborhoods Today

A study of more than 100 cities shows neighborhoods subjected to discriminatory housing policies nearly a century ago are hotter today than other areas.
by Meg Anderson via NPR on January 14, 2020

The Ladder Up

A restless history of Washington Heights.
by Carina del Valle Schorske via VQR on December 14, 2019

Walking with the Ghosts of Black Los Angeles

"You can't disentangle blackness and California."
by Ismail Muhammad via Literary Hub on September 20, 2019

Capturing Black Bottom, a Detroit Neighborhood Lost to Urban Renewal

A new exhibit at the Detroit Public Library, displays old images of the historic African American neighborhood in its final days.
by Amy Crawford via CityLab on February 15, 2019
The U.S. Housing Corporation built nearly 300 homes in Bremerton, Wash., during World War I.

A Time When the US Government Built Homes for Working-Class Americans to Deal With a Housing Crisis

During World War I, the government constructed entire communities for workers and their families, setting new standards for housing and neighborhood planning.
by Eran Ben-Joseph via The Conversation on May 19, 2025
A young boy peers out from a hole in a fence as his friends play basketball in a court where police officers are gathering for a patrol.

How White-Collar Criminals Plundered a Brooklyn Neighborhood

How East New York was ransacked by the real estate industry and abandoned by the city in the process.
by Kristen Martin via The Nation on March 20, 2025
Front entrance of the abandoned Florida Solite plant.

The Machine in the Garden

After decades of unchecked hazardous waste pollution, a Florida hamlet fights the developers eager to build homes there anyway.
by Jordan Blumetti via Oxford American on March 18, 2025
A moving truck on cinder blocks.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on February 10, 2025
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