TOPIC

Gentrification

Who Makes the Many Harlems?

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

People Movers

Landmarks Are for Our People

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.

What Do You Avoid? Where Do You Belong?

Theater-makers, natives, and newcomers draw mental maps of how they navigate comfort and discomfort in a rapidly changing city.

Chinatown Shop Talk

As Manhattan's Chinatown experiences rapid change, a historic porcelain store on Mott Street reinvents itself as a space for intergenerational dialogue and community activation. UO talks to Mei Lum and Diane Wong, the minds behind the W.O.W. Project, about what they've learned and where they're headed next.

Embedding Histories in a Changing Prospect Heights

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani shares stories of significant personal places from six Prospect Heights residents in the early 2000s and introduces a project to make visible those stories in the very different landscape of the contemporary neighborhood.

Black Radical Weeksville

Jonathan Tarleton explores how the Weeksville Heritage Center is leveraging Crown Heights’ and Bed-Stuy’s storied pasts, local assets, and arts and culture to catalyze a community in the midst of shifting neighborhood dynamics.

The Value of Land: How Community Land Trusts Maintain Housing Affordability

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.

El Barrio's Haunted Houses

Urban Omnibus Writing Competition: Fuzzy Math

The Ricotta Index

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.

Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts

Fort Greene, Brooklyn

In the second in a series of profiles of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts, Mercedes Kraus looks at how a cultural community has flourished by leveraging its legacy of artistic production in the face of intensifying real estate pressure and outside influence and interest.