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.

Mapping Main Street heads to Flushing for audio-video explorations of Main St. produced by neighborhood students, providing a local snapshot of the nation-wide project.

For five years this collaborative has worked to address the challenge of increasing immigrant involvement in city parks. Check out their work and hear from two participants.