Two refugees, a longtime community member, and the International Rescue Committee's New Roots program manager tell us how a Bronx garden melds resettlement efforts, job training, and good ole' fashioned community building, served up with a side of bitter melon.

Farzana Gandhi, Anusha Venkataraman, and Gabriela Alvarez explain the motivations behind and the design for a mobile health and wellness unit, sharing how the project can use a community's traditions to help solve some contemporary challenges.

Deborah Helaine Morris, one of two runners-up of the Fuzzy Math writing competition, charts the shifting demographics of one pocket of Brooklyn through the dairy aisle of her local supermarkets, delis, and specialty food stores.

In a filmmaker's depiction of a diverse, family-oriented Williamsburg community, viewers are served ingredients that commingle to form a lingering sense of loss.

In the first in a series of profiles of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts, Caitlin Blanchfield reports on how a robust network of community-based groups in Corona, Queens, has put local cultural vitality and institutional partnerships to work in reclaiming a public space for neighborhood use.

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani tells the story behind an innovative memorial to a century-old tragedy with an evolving and enduring legacy for labor rights, building codes and the challenges of commemoration.

Suketu Mehta reflects on immigration, density and neighborhood change while wandering the Queens streets where he lived as a teenager.

Xenophobia. Unfunded entitlements. Anti-immigrant zeal. More retirees than workers. Crumbling infrastructure. Failing schools. Threats to burn books. Taken together, our national ailments have shaken my belief in a Country of Cities. I have argued on these pages that density and infrastructure, and the diverse ecology they engender, can lead us out of this recession to a greener, leaner nation...

Seema Agnani’s work with South Asian immigrants on housing needs charts a course for legalizing basement apartments to create affordable housing.