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A gavel smashing a wooden house.

The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning

America is suffering from a severe housing shortage. A crucial tool may lie in the Constitution.
by Ilya Somin, Joshua Braver via The Atlantic on June 12, 2024
Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol hears from citizens at a board meeting in November. The attendees were demanding more affordable housing in Arlington, Va.
partner

The Battle of the Suburbs is Back. Will It End Differently?

The lessons of the past for suburban affordable housing advocates.
by Lily Geismer via Made By History on April 25, 2023
A row of large new suburban houses at sunset.

The Ongoing Toll of Segregation

Sheryll Cashin’s “White Space, Black Hood” shows how economic discrimination combines with racial injustice in America’s housing policy.
by Richard D. Kahlenburg via The New Republic on December 2, 2021
Formal portrait photo of Harland Bartholomew in suit and tie

One Man Zoned Huge Swaths of Our Region for Sprawl, Cars, and Exclusion

Bartholomew’s legacy demonstrates with particular clarity that planning is never truly neutral; value judgments are always embedded in engineers' objectives.
by Ben Ross via Greater Greater Washington on January 8, 2019
853 map of San Francisco by the U. S. Coast Survey

Demolishing the California Dream: How San Francisco Planned Its Own Housing Crisis

Today's housing crisis in San Francisco originates from zoning laws that segregated racial groups and income levels.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford via Collectors Weekly on September 21, 2018

How the Battle for Sunlight Shaped New York City

As the city reached for the sky, those down below had to scramble for daylight.
by Laura Bliss via CityLab on December 18, 2016
Robert Moses sitting in front of a catelog of blueprints.

The Inadequacy of the Abundance Agenda

Three new books propose market solutions to problems that require government intervention. We’ve been here before. It didn’t end well.
by Timothy Noah via The New Republic on March 27, 2025
A person carrying a table into a moving van.

Why American Mobility Ground to a Halt

Once a nation of movers, the US has lost its “culture of mobility,” a new book argues. That’s been a disaster for housing affordability and economic progress.
by Yoni Appelbaum, Patrick Sisson via CityLab on February 12, 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
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.
by Tracy Rosenthal, Leonardo Vilchis via Literary Hub on September 25, 2024
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?
by Kaila Philo via The Baffler on May 9, 2023
An aerial picture of Chelsea Creek and Revere.

Always Devoted to Such Use: Sacrifice Zones and Storage on the Boston-Revere Border

A new logistics center in Revere tells a familiar story and poses the question: how inextricable is land use from the land itself?
by Tess D. McCann via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on October 21, 2022
Picture of an ornate door knocker.

What Historic Preservation Is Doing to American Cities

Laws meant to safeguard great buildings and neighborhoods can also present an obstacle to social progress.
by Jacob Anbinder via The Atlantic on May 2, 2022
Albert Turner and Bob Mants are walking directly behind Williams and Lewis across Edmund Pettus Bridge
partner

Biden’s Push for an Infrastructure Presidency Risks Sacrificing Black Communities

Infrastructure has a long history of cloaking racism and preventing justice.
by N. D. B. Connolly via Made By History on March 15, 2022
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.
by Max Holleran via Aeon on December 9, 2021
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.
by Gene Slater, Patrick Sisson via CityLab on September 28, 2021
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

Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It

The automobile took over because the legal system helped squeeze out the alternatives.
by Gregory H. Shill via The Atlantic on July 9, 2019

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.
by Angela Hope Stiefbold via The Metropole on September 12, 2018

Fresno’s Mason-Dixon Line

More than 50 years after redlining was outlawed, the legacy of discrimination can still be seen in California’s poorest large city.
by Reis Thebault via The Atlantic on August 20, 2018

When Government Drew the Color Line

A review of "The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America."
by Jason DeParle via New York Review of Books on February 11, 2018

The Racial Segregation of American Cities Was Anything But Accidental

A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city.
by Richard Rothstein, Katie Nodjimbadem via Smithsonian on May 30, 2017
Protestors walking with pro-integration posters

"Jim Crow Must Go"

Thousands of New York City students staged a one-day boycott to protest segregation – and it barely made the history books.
by Matt Delmont via Salon on February 3, 2016
Two young women holding up protest signs.

Demand for School Integration Leads to Massive 1964 Boycott — In New York City

The largest civil rights demonstration in U.S. history was not in Little Rock. Or Selma. Or Montgomery. It happened in New York City.
by Yasmeen Khan via WNYC on February 3, 2016
The words "the world you were born in no longer exists" covering Trump's eyes.

The Present Crisis and the End of the Long '90s

On the constitutional settlement that governed America from the end of the Volcker Shock in 1982 to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024.
by Samantha Hancox-Li via Liberal Currents on April 24, 2025
Illustration from the “Projected Trends” section of Hugh Ferriss’ The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism

In the early twentieth century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia.
by Eva Miller via The Public Domain Review on April 9, 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
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
Ellsworth Kelly at his Coenties Slip Studio, New York, 1961.

How a Formerly Deserted Waterfront Neighborhood Attracted Artists to Manhattan in the Mid 1900s

A compelling history of the fertile 1950s-’60s firmament surveys Lower Manhattan’s Coenties Slip.
by Walker Downey via Art In America on August 1, 2023
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