Filter by:

Filter by published date

Aerial view of the suburbs.

How Racist Policies Destroyed Public Housing and Created the American Suburbs

The systematic post-war displacement of communities of color.
Bars labeled First through Fourth depicting risk levels for housing loans.

The Shame of the Suburbs

How America gave up on housing equality.

Here Come the Cul-de-Sacs

Satellite images dating back to 1975 allow researchers to map how millions of cul-de-sacs and dead-ends have proliferated in street networks worldwide.

The Value of Farmland: Rural Gentrification and the Movement to Stop Sprawl

Rapidly rising metropolitan land value can mean "striking gold" for some landowners while threatening the livelihood of others.
Aerial view of Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.

Why Are America’s Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia?

Suburban corporate campuses have isolated themselves by design from the communities their products were supposed to impact.

American Green

How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America, and what is the ecological cost?
Harvester on farmland.

America’s Pernicious Rural Myth

An interview with Steven Conn about his new book, “Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t.”
A drawing of a playground slide painted like a road.

What Adults Lost When Kids Stopped Playing in the Street

In many ways, a world built for cars has made life so much harder for grown-ups.
Blue-print style sketch of a suburban home, with sidewalk, driveway, and garage

How the Suburbs Became a Trap

Neighborhoods that once promised prosperity now offer crumbling infrastructure, aged housing stock, and social animus.
Sinclair Lewis.

How to Study the “Village Virus”

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.
Cartoon of California and Colorado talking about suburban housing.

Orange County, Colorado

How a California homebuilder remade the Interior West.
Row of suburban homes.

White America Facing Its Ghosts

The slow unraveling of a nation’s suburbs.
A collage shows a white hand segregating Black Americans.

No Breakthrough in Sight

More than fifty years after the Fair Housing Act, inequality and segregation persists. What went wrong?
Visualization showing the largest cities in the US, from the Statistical Atlas of the Eleventh Census, 1790-1890

Growing New England's Cities

What can a visualization of population growth in cities and towns in the Northeast tell us about different moments in the region's economic geography?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 3 in Fort Washington, Md.
partner

The Surprising Roots of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Idea of National Divorce

Greene probably has visions of suburban Atlanta in the 1990s and 2000s, not the Civil War.
Mike Lawler, Republican candidate for New York's 17th Congressional District.
partner

The GOP Can Thank Suburban N.Y. For its Slim Control of The House

How a red wave in a solidly blue state helped tip the balance.
Redlining map from the 1930s

The Tyranny Of The Map: Rethinking Redlining

In trying to understand one of the key aspects of structural racism, have we constructed a new moralistic story that obscures more than it illuminates?
Lucille Walker, a domestic servant, holding a child on a suburban lawn.

Living in White Spaces: Suburbia's Hidden Histories

The Black women and men who worked and slept in white homes are mostly invisible in the histories of suburbia.
Robert Adams, “Tract House, Longmont, Colorado,” 1973.

Robert Adams Looked Past Despair and Found the Truth of America

"To render the world more beautiful than it really is, as so many landscape photographers before Adams routinely did, is dishonest."
Overhead view of people walking around in the Mall of America

The Most American Form of Architecture Isn’t Going Anywhere

A new book challenges the dominant narrative that malls are dying.
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.
Collage of a residential security map.

The Lasting Legacy Of Redlining

We looked at 138 formerly redlined cities and found most were still segregated — just like they were designed to be.
Sepia tone photo of Hester Street, New York, crowded with people and vendors in 1902.

How Urban Density Can Make Our Neighbourhoods Better

Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty, but today it is necessary to make cities sustainable.
Rural front lawn with a Trump sign.
partner

Our Urban/Rural Political Divide is Both New — And Decades In The Making

Policies dating to the 1930s have helped shape the conflict defining today’s politics.
A black and white photo of new suburban homes, 1963.

When Real Estate Agents Led the Fight Against Fair Housing

A new book argues that the real estate industry’s campaign to defend housing segregation still echoes in today’s politics.
Overhead image of suburban houses from Levittown, Pennsylvania

The Origins of Sprawl

On William Gibson, Sonic Youth, and the genesis of the American suburb.
Federal Reserve building.
partner

The Fed Could Undo Decades of Damage to Cities. Here’s How.

The bond market has fueled vast inequities between cities and suburbs — especially in smaller locales.

How DIY Home Repair Became a Hobby for Men

It was only in the 20th century that toolboxes became staples in the homes of middle-class men.

Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong

The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created, and how we can dismantle it.
Prison cells

The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration

Everything you knew about mass incarceration is wrong.

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person