urban history

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/2/2021
  

  The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives’ Theory About Gentrification

  by Jacob Ambinder

  Anti-gentrification activists portray themselves as champions of the poor, but they generally represent a coalition of property owners who benefit from keeping the supply of a resource – housing – scarce. How can the political and economic incentives of land and housing be realigned?

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  1/4/2021
  

  Disciplining The City: Scholarship And The Carceral State Year In Review 2020

  Charlotte Rosen and Matthew Guariglia compile 2020's most essential works of scholarship on the nexus of urbanization, racism, policing, and mass incarceration. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/2/2021
  

  ‘Year of the Reveal’: Runoffs Follow Pandemic, Protests and a Test of Atlanta’s Promise

  Civil rights historian Calinda Lee places Atlanta at the center of political and economic changes in the south, but whether the change is deep or superficial remains to be seen. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/22/2020
  

  How Cities Lost Control of Police Discipline

  The New York Times has published a deep dive into the history of police union contracts, which, in the wake of protests in cities like Detroit, became extremely powerful shields for police departments and individual officers from accountability for misconduct. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/13/2020
  

  A UMBC Professor is Documenting the History of the Lumbee Indian Community in Baltimore

  Folklorist Ashley Minner is collecting artifacts and documentation of the Lumbee community in Baltimore, a large and vital community of urban Native Americans that has had its existence obscured and erased. 

• 

• Terror in the City Too Busy to Hate: How the English Avenue School Bombing Challenged Atlanta’s Popular Myth of Racial Progress

  by Max Blau and Todd Michney

  Months before Atlanta’s public schools desegregated, someone bombed an all-Black school on the city’s Westside. On the 60th anniversary of that incident, Max Blau and Todd Michney revisit the forces that led to the attack and reflect on its legacy.

• 
• SOURCE: Deadline
  12/12/2020
  

  New York’s 21 Club Closing, Possibly Ending Historic Run That Began During Prohibition Era

  The famed New York establishment may not survive the coronavirus pandemic. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  12/10/2020
  

  The Growth Of Market-Oriented Urban Policy — A Review Of Neoliberal Cities

  by Tracy Neumann

  A new collection of essays seeks to develop a historical understanding and grounding for the often vague term "neoliberalism" through its transformation of urban space and politics. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/5/2020
  

  East Village Fire Damages 128-Year-Old Church

  Middle Collegiate Church was a beacon of inclusion and tolerance for its congregants and the surrounding community. The damaged building was 128 years old, but the congregation originated before the American Revolution. 

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• 12/6/2020
  

  How Venetians Invented Health Care

  by Meredith F. Small

  It's been widely discussed during this pandemic year that Venetians invented the quarantine. But the author of a new book on Venice's history of innovation argues that it was just one of the public health measures for which we can thank them.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/30/2020
  

  The Country’s Oldest Chinatown is Fighting for its Life in San Francisco

  Tourism to San Francisco has fallen by half since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and tourist spending has declined even further, impacting many of Chinatown's businesses as well as its social life. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/30/2020
  

  Why New York’s Mob Mythology Endures

  by Adam Gopnik

  "Generally, in Mob stories, the cute bits are not real, and the real bits are not cute. Given that grim truth, there’s something to be said for just shutting your eyes and repeating the cute bits." Some new books on the Mafia unfortunately follow the pattern. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/16/2020
  

  The Cities Central to Fraud Conspiracy Theories Didn’t Cost Trump the Election

  by Emily Badger

  Trump's focus on Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee reflect the attempt to mobilize longstanding suspicion by many white Americans of cities and Black voters, not any significant changes in the vote in those cities since the last election.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/19/2020
  

  What Did Europe Smell Like Centuries Ago? Historians Set Out to Recreate Lost Scents

  An ambitious project seeks to make museums a more immersive experience by using big data to mine primary sources for references to scent and use chemistry and perfumerie to recreate the mix of odors characteristic of a time and place. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  11/17/2020
  

  How Suburbs Swung the 2020 Election

  by Richard Florida, Marie Patino and Rachel Dottle

  The noted urban theorist points out that assumptions about suburban voters haven't kept up with the changing demographic realities of America's suburbs, which house a majority of the population and differ from each other as much as they do from central cities. 

• 
• SOURCE: Rolling Stone
  11/19/2020
  

  The Untouchables: An Investigation into the Violence of the Chicago Police

  by Paul Solotaroff

  Historian Simon Balto is among experts who place the Chicago Police Department's treatment of the city's Black communities in historical perspective. 

• 
• SOURCE: Places Journal
  11/15/2020
  

  Reservoir: Nature, Culture, Infrastructure

  by Luc Sante

  A four-part series of essays and photography examines the creation, maintenance and consequences of the reservoirs constructed to supply water to New York City, including the complex divisions and connections among urban and rural communities. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Historical Society
  11/18/2020
  

  NYHS Fellowships for 2021-22 Deadlines Begin in January

  The New York Historical Society reminds potential candidates that the deadline for most of its fellowships for the 2021-22 academic year is January 15. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  11/16/2020
  

  Preexisting Conditions: What 2020 Reveals About Our Urban Future

  by Thomas J. Sugrue

  Crisis Cities is a public symposium on the 2020 crises and their impact on urban life, co-organized by Public Books and the NYU Cities Collaborative. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  11/7/2020
  

  Georgia’s Political Shift – a Tale of Urban and Suburban Change

  by Jan Nijman

  If Georgia is demographically and politically becoming unlike neighboring Republican strongholds like Alabama and Tennessee, it has, in some respects, moved in a similar direction as Arizona, where the two major metropolitan regions of Phoenix and Tucson make up over 80% of the state’s population, and where Democrats have improved their standing in recent years.