TOPIC

Race

Arch-Conservative

Vito Battista’s journey from public architecture to right-wing politics is an echo of New York’s own cyclical, reactionary tides — and a reminder of how closely the city's politics are tied to the fate of its urban fabric.

Unjust Treatment

The geography of methadone treatment in New York City follows familiar patterns of discrimination, while clinics subject patients to punishment, not rehabilitation. Does this one kind of medicine need its own space in the first place?

Burial Rights

Organizers in Flatbush are fighting for the preservation of an African burial ground — to honor the dead, and protect a living community's future.

Withdrawn Waters

The balance between New York City's public and private pools has shifted dramatically in recent decades. Why has so much city swimming retreated into towers or behind fences?

Memory Loss

Roots of Memory

Less conspicuous and permanent than statues or sculptures, New York City’s memorial trees register histories that are personal, passed over, or in progress, from intimate loss to climate catastrophe.

Swim Lessons

Pools are sites for recreation and fun. But as much as any public space in New York, they also carry the weight of the city's complex histories of race and place.

Memory Loss

The Bergen Family Owned 46 People

Drawing on census records, newspaper ads, and more from the city's archives, activists call attention to the legacy of slavery embedded in the names of familiar streets and neighborhoods.

Memory Loss

A Monumental Shift

A group of artists and creative technologists is wielding augmented reality to insert heroic women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ icons into an uneven landscape of public memory.

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?

Behind the Mask

Two scholars navigate the myths and abstractions attached to marginalized urban neighborhoods, bridging the distance between narratives imposed from outside and residents' experiences and spatial practices.