urban history 
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/25/2021
Searching for Our Urban Future in the Ruins of the Past
Annalee Newitz's book on lost cities debunks the idea of sudden, catastrophic collapse. But the death of cities does show that humanity is vulnerable to change that makes centuries-old ways of life untenable.
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SOURCE: WHYY
2/23/2021
Camden’s ‘Hoodbrarian’ Brings Love of Books to Community
One citizen's efforts are carrying on the community functions of a public library system decimated by budget cuts in Camden, New Jersey.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
2/25/2021
The Tokyo Moment: What Developing Cities Can Learn From The Postwar Japanese Capital
by Ben Bensal
"Studying postwar Tokyo helps historicize the discourse on megacities, which is still in its infancy. While there are important similarities between today’s megacities in terms of their size, organizational complexity, and socio-economic challenges, there are important contextual differences that are best assessed using a historical approach."
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SOURCE: Public Books
2/16/2021
The Arch of Injustice
Historian Steven Hahn reviews Walter Johnson's "The Broken Heart of America," finding that Johnson makes a compelling case that St. Louis is the archetypal American city but is less effective at showing concepts like white supremacy and racial capitalism as dynamic historical processes.
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SOURCE: The Metro
2/23/2021
An Ode To Kenneth Kusmer (1945-2020)
by Walter Greason
A former doctoral student says "Kenneth Kusmer is a legendary historian for his scholarship, his teaching, and his service. Those accomplishments only scratch the surface of his contributions to history and civilization."
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SOURCE: Washingtonian
2/22/2021
Black Broadway in DC: A New Book Explores the Undeniable Influence of U Street’s History
Briana Thomas's "Black Broadway in Washington, DC" examines the city's U Street, which was not just a daily fixture of Black life in the District, but a connector of Black America's aspirations in politics, education and business.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/18/2021
The Real Story of the ‘Draft Riots’
by Elizabeth Mitchell
"The story of the merchants’ response to the so-called Draft Riots is a reminder that we can all do more if we don’t want the lives of more Black people to be marred by cruelty."
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SOURCE: WGN
2/16/2021
Group Fighting for Historic Landmark Recognition for Chicago Mansion with Deep History
“Black women were migrating from the South and they had nowhere to go because economically, there were no jobs here for them,” Tate said. “So this was a place that spiritually, intellectually, socially, economically, they will magnify, to the point that they could go out and get a job and be somebody.”
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SOURCE: The Conversation
2/10/2021
Fighting School Segregation Didn’t Take Place Just In The South
by Ashley Farmer
"The Harlem 9’s fight serves as an important reminder that school desegregation protests were popular and successful in the North as well as in the South."
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SOURCE: Bitter Southerner
2/9/2021
Houston Hip-Hop and Chinese Chicken
by Alana Dao
The story of a restaurant run by Chinese immigrants in Houston is the story of the growth of the diverse Gulf coast metropolis and its fusion of ethnic cultures.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/10/2021
Black Women have Shaped Politics in Boston for Centuries
by Kabria Baumgartner
From free speech to educational equity to fair housing, Black women in Boston have been at the front lines of challenging the city's political establishment to live up to ideals of democracy associated with the city. The presumptive mayor-elect Kim Janey will carry on that tradition.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
2/8/2021
“A New Jerusalem”–A Review Of The City-State Of Boston
Kristian Price reveiws Mark Peterson's study of Boston from its founding through the mid-19th century, which focuses on the contradiction of the Puritan ideal of a city of moral rectitude and the economic necessity of local merchants' enthusiastic participation in the slave trade.
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SOURCE: Public Books
2/5/2021
On Baltimore: Narratives and City Making
by Bo McMillan
A Review of Mary Rizzo's "Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and The Wire," which argues that development interests in the city have used popular culture to craft an image of eccentric white ethnic residents that erases the city's racial segregation and the interests of the city's Black majority.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/31/2021
Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Really Looks Like
by Annalee Newitz
"Having spent the past several years researching a book about ancient abandoned cities, I’ve come to realize that urban collapse is a modern-day version of an apocalypse prophecy: It’s always lurking just around the corner, seductive and terrifying, but it never quite happens."
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SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
1/27/2021
How the New Orleans Streetcar Revival Left Bus Riders Behind
A number of historical dynamics, including racial segregation and the growth of a tourist economy, account for decisions in the Crescent City that have refurbished a fraction of the old streetcar system at high cost while ignoring the health of bus systems that poor and working residents depend on, says NOLA transit historian Kevin McQueeney.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
2/2/2021
African Americans At St. Elizabeth’s — A Review Of Madness In The City Of Magnificent Expectations
Martin Summers' book on Washington's Saint Elizabeth's Hospital shows how early mental health institutions differentiated the Black and White psyches in diagnosis and care, exposing the role of psychiatry in maintaining and institutionalizing racial inequality, writes reviewer Debra Kram-Fernandez.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
1/21/2021
The Rise and Fall of America's Lesbian Bars
Even before COVID-19 a combination of factors have made lesbian bars much less common than their counterparts catering to gay men. Two filmmakers are working to raise funds to keep these establishments in business. This article also explains how bars became safe gathering places as cities passed "vice" laws that subjected lesbians to police harassment in public.
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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.
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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.
News
- The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning
- America’s Political Roots Are in Eutaw, Alabama
- University Finds 18th-Century Schoolhouse Where Black Children Learned to Read
- Searching for Our Urban Future in the Ruins of the Past
- Denied a Teaching Job for Being ‘Too Black,’ She Started Her Own School — And a Movement