The Riders Alliance floods the city’s subway stations and bus stops, organizing normally disengaged riders to fight for better public transit.

Integration without gentrification? Self-determination without segregation? Who has the power to determine Harlem’s future?

Junior architect Zulmilena Then, our second featured People Mover, is on a mission to preserve East New York’s history in the face of speculation.

How can protestors get their points across to an unyielding city? Oksana Mironova shows how gumming up the works may trump gathering in the square.

In a new series, People Movers, community organizers share how they shape the city from the ground up. First, Verónica Ramírez of the Queens-based Mujeres en Movimiento mobilizes immigrant moms to fight for safer streets.

Nandini Bagchee shares her students' work to forge an equal exchange with activists fighting for community space in the South Bronx, in a studio where designers became advocates and advocates became designers.

In the latest Brass Tacks discussion, representatives from Coalition for the Homeless and Picture the Homeless considered homelessness as a symptom of our housing crisis and efforts to create permanent housing solutions.

Why does the history of squatting in New York matter? Artists, historians, documentarians, and writers reflect on a singular passage in the city's story, and what it can offer today.

The Harbor Ring would interconnect the waterfronts of Brooklyn, Staten Island, Bayonne, Jersey City, Hoboken, and Manhattan — and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge could be the missing link. Paul Gertner, chair of Transportation Alternatives' Harbor Ring Committee tells SLO about the longstanding effort to complete the Ring and unite the harbor region.

Oksana Mironova documents varied approaches to City-led redevelopment in Lincoln Square and the West Side Urban Renewal Area and calls for an evolution of contemporary rezonings to prioritize the preservation of existing communities.

Casita Maria’s Elaine Delgado and Christine Licata describe the sites, markers, and programs of the South Bronx Culture Trail and pay homage to the area's exceptional cultural history.

Singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane describes the way architecture, literature, and historical research inform his compositions and why he's drawn to storytelling tied to place.

Marcus Moore and Sam Miller of Picture the Homeless, an organization led by homeless and formerly homeless people, discuss their activism on issues of affordable housing, police harassment, and shelter reform.

Oksana Mironova charts an alternative strategy to land ownership and property management that helps communities solve a broad range of problems — including widening inequality and decreasing community control over housing costs — that affect residents across the country.

Sarika Bansal investigates how local traditions of advocacy, a history of community tensions, and the chronic underfunding of public housing inform residents' opposition to a controversial new development proposal at Smith Houses.

Hester Street Collaborative's Anne Frederick and Dylan House discuss a temporary pop-up public space on the Lower East Side that creates an asset for the neighborhood while informing and building momentum for the design of a future permanent park.

Yukie Ohta looks at the dramatic transformation of SoHo over the past 50 years, from a center for light manufacturing, to a desolate and dangerous wasteland, to one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York.