TOPIC

Economy

Something Better Than Nothing

A half-century of experiments in private sector solutions to urban problems has brought mixed results and exacerbated inequality. How did we get here?

Mobilizing Support

A harm reduction collective works to meet people who use drugs "where they're at," not just metaphorically, but geographically.

Market Share

Designed for other uses and users, Corona Plaza has become a critical infrastructure for streetside selling. In the face of economic and legal pressures, vendors are organizing themselves and the space to ensure both individual survival and collective prosperity.

Cleaning Up?

Hidden Maladies and Misplaced Remedies

Toxic industrial legacies — and their hazards — extend far beyond high-profile parcels. Measures to remediate them need to treat a broader urban landscape, too.

What About Jane?

As cities, and the way we understand them, have changed, so has the reputation of a preeminent urban thinker. If gentrification and structural racism are the problems, does Jane Jacobs still have the answers?

Shelf Life

Property of the Pandemic

From face masks to diaries, institutions are collecting artifacts from daily life under COVID-19. One itinerant museum has preserved letters from landlords to tenants for posterity.

Building Structure and Building Power

If the current times are precarious for designers, that insecurity starts with the way their labor is organized. Through the pain of layoffs, pay cuts, furloughs and more, The Architecture Lobby is mobilizing the collective agency of architectural workers within and beyond the office.

Digital Frictions

A Tour of Some Logistics Landscapes

From satellites to elevators, the technologies that coordinate the on-demand economy also organize our sense of what kind of world is possible and desirable.

Digital Frictions

Latchkey Living

An indicator species in vinyl and metal, the streetside lockbox signals the rise of a short-term city.

Co-Op City

Rather than extractive economic development, the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative cultivates a vision of home-grown wealth that stays in the borough.