The Reconnecting Communities program is giving $3.3 billion to help cities address problems caused by highways. But in most cases, the projects stop short of removing highways altogether.
The I-81 project, completed in 1968—and Syracuse remains one of the most segregated cities in the country, with the highest concentration of poverty among communities of color, and the highest rates of lead poisoning in children. This was by design.
Policing is not the only kind of state violence. In the mid-twentieth century, city governments, backed by federal money, demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
A portrait of the exploitative, homicidal racial dynamics lying at the nation’s core, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis.
A timely tale of what happens when engaged citizens fight the power. Jane Jacobs was a visionary activist and writer who fought to preserve urban communities in the face of destructive development projects.
David Simon’s HBO TV series Show Me a Hero follows the racist fight against public housing in 1980s Yonkers, New York but, as author Kevin Baker reveals, it’s just one instance in the sordid American history of kicking Black people out of their neighborhoods. The issue is not only the refusal of white people to live with people of color, but their conviction that Black space is not legitimate, and that whatever Black people own can be expropriated.
Reader Comments: #BlackLivesMatter and Bernie Sanders; The Value of Protest; US Cited for Police Violence, Racism; Private Prisons; Euro Agreement and Greece; Urban Renewal and Public Space;
Announcement: Rosa Luxemburg Conference - New Takes on a Longtime Classic - New York - August 21 - 22
(Moderator's Note - There will be no Tidbits for the next three weeks)
Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by the police on the sidewalk outside a shop a year ago this Friday. The battle over his death isn’t only about policing, but about public space. It’s about real estate and urban renewal, lines that should not be crossed, and places that are off limits to certain people. And it’s about public places where African-Americans and others are supposed to be invisible, without access to their infrastructure and amenities.
Gentrification is no myth, and saying so is magical thinking. Through oral histories and a solid grasp of urban history and urban geography, journalist GW Gibson shows not just its quite palpable and direct contribution to the displacement of low-income people, but, using New York City as his template, traces the radical decline of affordable housing city-wide. Case closed!
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