Lawmakers Aim to Protect Private Landowners on U.S.-Mexico Border
On Friday, a day after Congress passed its spending package, the President declared a national emergency in order to obtain the funds from elsewhere to build the wall—funds that the spending...
View ArticleWhy the Amazon Pushback Is Also About Immigrants
When Amazon announced that it would be cancelling plans to build a headquarters in Long Island City last week, among the many groups claiming victory were immigration activists. For them, the...
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Navigator: What Is ‘Home’?
Hi y’all. Due to some technical difficulties, this edition of Navigator is a day late. But read on—we’ve got some great stuff for you!Every day, around the world, cities become more and more like...
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For Students in Baltimore, Getting to School Can Be a Scary Ride
On Friday, Bryonna Harris was taking a city bus back from Frederick Douglass High School to her home in Northeast Baltimore. But on that afternoon, the trip took a little longer: Someone had been...
View ArticleDid AOC’s Questions on Trump’s Real Estate Valuations Unlock His Tax Returns?
In The New York Times, Caroline Fredrickson, the president of the American Constitution Society, declared that freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “won the Cohen hearing.“ Instead of...
View ArticleDoes Foreclosure Affect How We Vote?
Like many others, Deirdre Pfeiffer was shocked by the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A housing researcher at Arizona State University, she wondered whether the housing distress...
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The 'Atlas of Inequality’ Maps Micro-Level Segregation
When I lived in my old D.C. neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, it was at that particular stage of gentrification where it seemed truly diverse. Taquerias and pupuserias stood right alongside indie...
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Navigator: I Love Airports!
It’s 6:47 a.m. on Friday as I write this, and I am more than four hours early for my international flight. (I mixed up the departure time with the arrival time!)Light from the brightening sky has been...
View ArticleThe Secret Ingredient of Resilient Cities: Culture
An oft-told urban success story is that of Medellín, Colombia. Under Pablo Escobar, the notorious drug lord that inspired the Netflix show Narcos, the city was one of the most violent places on earth...
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Unpacking the Power of Privileged Neighborhoods
Conventional wisdom says that place matters more for people who live in distressed neighborhoods—places with low median incomes and not a lot of opportunity. That’s why policymakers have traditionally...
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Are California's Police Departments Defying Its Sanctuary Law?
In late 2017, California’s then-Governor Jerry Brown signed a package of “sanctuary” bills that included SB 54—the first statewide bill of its scope limiting local and state cooperation with federal...
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What Happens to Community Bonds When a Neighborhood Gentrifies
A lot has changed over the last decade in Philadelphia’s Graduate Hospital neighborhood. Named after a long-closed medical facility, this residential area of modest brick rowhomes south of affluent...
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Navigator: Bouncing Off The Walls
Hello and welcome back to Navigator!Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about walls.In Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, Sarah Williams Goldhagen argues that how we embody...
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From Gentrification to Decline: How Neighborhoods Really Change
When people talk about how big cities have changed over the last two decades, the word that inevitably comes up is gentrification—the influx of affluent newcomers. A transformative wave of wealth—often...
View ArticleWhat D.C.’s Go-Go Showdown Reveals About Gentrification
I live down the street from a Metro PCS store at the corner of 7th and Florida in Washington D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood, and every weekend, when I’m crossing the road at that intersection, I bop. The...
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What Do Migrant Kids See When They Visualize 'Home'?
Last year, the U.S. government built a massive detention facility to hold migrant children in a remote area around Tornillo, Texas, a town near the U.S.-Mexico border. Over its seven-month lifespan,...
View ArticleWhy HUD Wants to Restrict Assistance for Immigrants
The Trump administration is targeting immigrants with a new policy—this time, by seeking to restrict housing assistance for families with mixed-citizenship status.On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of...
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Navigator: How Do You Read a City?
Hi friends!Today’s Navigator comes from Adam Sneed, an editor here at CityLab whose tasks include, among other things, whipping our daily newsletter in shape. He’s off on vacation soon, and had a few...
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A Bottom-Line Case for the Green New Deal: The Jobs Pay More
The much-hyped Green New Deal, which laid out the broad strokes of a U.S. transition to green energy by 2030, failed in Congress. But its champions haven’t given up. Representative Alexandria...
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Navigator: End of the Line
Hi pals,So, my colleague and friend Gracie McKenzie recently finished a quest that took her a while! She traveled to the end of all the D.C. Metro lines. Here is what she learned: I live closer to...
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The Tenants Fighting Back Against Facial Recognition Technology
Last year, residents of Atlantic Plaza Towers, a rent-stabilized apartment building in Brooklyn, found out that their landlord was planning to replace the key fob entry system with facial recognition...
View ArticleHUD Rule Targeting Immigrant Families Could Evict 55,000 Children
On Friday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed a new rule in the Federal Register seeking to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving federal housing assistance. The...
View ArticleThe Bay Area’s Spy Camera Ban Is Only the Beginning
Updated: 2019-05-14 Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, May 14, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to pass the facial recognition ban. OAKLAND, Calif.—On the first Thursday of every month, about a dozen...
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A New Way of Seeing the Global Migration Crisis
Moving—to escape existential harm, to preserve family, to find a better life, to follow opportunity, or just satiate curiosity—is a quintessentially human act. Migration unites us with our ancestors,...
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Navigator: Human Archipelago
Hi friends,For my last edition of Navigator,* I have a special treat in store for you. I spoke with novelist and author Teju Cole about his new book collaboration with photographer Fazal Sheikh. It’s...
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