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The Strange and Wonderful Subcultures of 1960s New York

From slum clearance to beatnik protests, how Greenwich Village became a battleground over race, art, and redevelopment.
by J. Hoberman via Jacobin on July 19, 2025
People protesting the demolition of homes to make way for the performing arts saying "shelter before culture."

Lincoln Center Destroyed Lives for the Sake of the Arts

The terrific new doc “San Juan Hill” chronicles the 1960s land grab that gave the Metropolitan Opera a home, while scattering longtime residents.
by Elizabeth Zimmer via Village Voice on October 3, 2024
Aerial view of big buildings, wide roads, open parking lots, and affordable housing from "Project One" in Newport, Virginia.

Urban Renewal in Virginia

Urban landscapes and communities all across the state of Virginia still bear the scars of urban renewal.
via Encyclopedia Virginia on September 19, 2024

Read Another Book

The Power Broker leaves us ill-equipped to understand or confront the struggles that face the city today.
by Henry Grabar via Slate on September 16, 2024

Photographing a Lost New York

When I moved to Lower Manhattan in 1967, I decided to make a picture of every building in the neighbourhood before the city knocked it down.
by Danny Lyon via New York Review of Books on April 25, 2024
Lincoln Center on the opening night of the Met Opera, 1966.

Curtains for Lincoln Center

On the falsification of Lincoln Center’s history.
by James Panero via The New Criterion on April 17, 2024
Society of Planning Officials tours the Freedom House.

Mapping Renewal, Engaging Residents

Reflections on Freedom House and citizen participation in Boston's urban renewal.
by Claire Dunning via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on July 28, 2023
A view of Greenwood Avenue before it was destroyed in the 1921 race massacre.

What Really Caused the Destruction of Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’

What happened after the destruction of Greenwood, once home to some of the wealthiest African Americans in the US.
by Brentin Mock, Victor Luckerson via CityLab on May 30, 2023
Ariel view of Hlll District over the years

A Black Vision for Development, in the Birthplace of Urban Renewal

Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District was razed by the federal government 65 years ago. Now developers are testing the question of how to correct for a racist past.
by Brentin Mock via CityLab on June 24, 2021

Tearing Down Black America

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. City governments have demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
by Brent Cebul via Boston Review on July 22, 2020
A street in the 1940s with cars parked in front of a food market and a barber shop.

Planned Destruction

A brief history on land ownership, valuation and development in the City of Richmond and the maps used to destroy black communities.
by LaToya S. Gray via ArcGIS StoryMaps on July 22, 2020

The Midcentury Battle to Save America’s Cities from Crisis

Lizabeth Cohen on the poverty and prosperity of the American city.
by Lizabeth Cohen via Literary Hub on October 8, 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
Children looking at an architectural model of a city.

Imagining a Past Future: Photographs from the Oakland Redevelopment Agency

City planner John B. Williams — and the photographic archive he commissioned — give us the opportunity to complicate received stories of failed urban renewal.
by Moriah Ulinskas via Places Journal on January 22, 2019

Even the Dead Could Not Stay

An illustrated history of urban renewal in Roanoke, Virginia.
by Martha Park via CityLab on January 19, 2018
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Renewing Inequality

An interactive set of maps documenting the more than 300,000 families displaced by urban renewal projects between 1955 and 1966.
by Robert K. Nelson, Brent Cebul, Justin Madron, Nathaniel Ayers via American Panorama on December 13, 2017

That World Is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town

The story of Vinegar Hill, a historically African American neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia.
via Field Studio on May 9, 2011
US National Guard troops block off Beale Street as Civil Rights marchers wearing placards reading, "I AM A MAN"

The Classical Liberal Foundation of Civil Rights

The progress we have seen toward civil rights for all Americans is inseparable from the history of classical liberalism.
by David Lewis Schaefer via Law & Liberty on June 24, 2025
Model Cities staff in front of a Baltimore field office in 1971

Could a Bold Anti-Poverty Experiment from the 1960s Inspire a New Era in Housing Justice?

The Great Society’s Model Cities Program wasn’t perfect. But it offered a vision of what democratic, community-based planning could look like.
by Deyanira Nevárez Martínez via The Conversation on May 27, 2025
Aerial view of Oakland.

The Future Happens in Oakland First. That’s a Cautionary Tale for Global Cities

International trade boomed with the city’s early adoption of technological and economic changes, but Black neighborhoods became ‘sacrifice zones.’
by Lois Beckett, Alexis C. Madrigal via The Guardian on March 22, 2025
A collage of rats, trash, rat exterminators, and a rat mascot.

Rats!

Baltimore's long history with its most polarizing pest.
by Lydia Woolever via Baltimore Magazine on January 2, 2025
A rendering of Buckminster Fuller and June Jordan's “Skyrise for Harlem” project published in Esquire, April 1965.

Nowhere But Up

In the wake of the 1964 Harlem riots, June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s plan to redesign the neighborhood suggested new possibilities for urban life.
by Nikil Saval via New York Review of Books on June 8, 2024
Map depicting existing and proposed structures and modifications to the Hayti neighborhood in Durham, NC, 1960.

The Uneven Costs of Cross-Country Connectivity

Promoted as a social and economic savior, the US federal interstate highway system acted as a tool to promote racial injustices.
by Kevin Fox Gotham, Aissa Dearing, Leland Ware, M. Ruth Little via JSTOR Daily on June 6, 2024
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
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Walt Disney Presents Manifest Destiny

On the St. Louis theme park that never made it past the drawing board.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on April 30, 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
Collage of George Romney giving a speech, the Baileys, their house, and riot police.

In 1967, a Black Man and a White Woman Bought a Home. American Politics Would Never Be the Same.

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.
by Zack Stanton via Politico Magazine on December 22, 2023
A modern paper map of Boston, marked with Sharpie lines.

Boston's Map, Explained

Boston has more "made" land than any other American city.
by Daniel Steiner via YouTube on October 26, 2023
City of Kirkwood map.

Annexation Politics & Manufacturing Blight in a Black St. Louis Suburb

Unveiling the conflict and consequences in Kirkwood's expansion.
by Bridget Laramie Kelly via The Metropole on September 12, 2023
Deborah Taylor Mapp at her home in the Broad Creek neighborhood of Norfolk, Va.

The Long History of Universities Displacing Black People

The expansion of higher education in Virginia uprooted hundreds of black families.
by Louis Hansen via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 11, 2023
Christopher Newport University.

Erasing the “Black Spot”: How a Virginia College Expanded by Uprooting a Black Neighborhood

Sixty-plus years ago, the white leaders of Newport News, Virginia, seized the core of a thriving Black community to build a college.
by Brandi Kellam, Louis Hansen via ProPublica on September 5, 2023
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