“I moved to Lower Manhattan when I was seventeen. The only things I cared about were books and music.”
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Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life
An incredible story about the system failing our children—through the eyes of one of New York’s 22,000 homeless children: Dasani’s own neighborhood, Fort Greene, is now one of gentrification’s gems. Her family lives in the Auburn Family Residence, a decrepit city-run shelter for the homeless. It is a place where mold creeps up walls and […]
‘An Island of Need in a Sea of Prosperity’: The Story of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Neighborhood
“It is a 40-square-block island of poverty and squalor.” The Tenderloin remains one of the seediest neighborhoods in San Francisco, mostly unchanged despite gentrification and an influx of tech money into the city. Can the neighborhood change—and just as importantly, should it? “If there is one ironclad rule that governs cities, it’s that money and […]
Oakland, the Last Refuge of Radical America
How the down-on-its-luck city ended up becoming a stronghold for the Occupy movement–and whether the radicals will stick around when gentrification takes hold: “Their small capitalist enterprise — named to evoke the famous anti-capitalist tract — represents another side of Oakland, albeit one that’s still in its infancy. Think of it as a less twee, […]
Diner for Schmucks
Which brings me to M. Wells, a metal-clad diner as shiny as a magpie’s trinket, situated on a corner in Queens as dead-drab as one of the borough’s countless cemeteries. A little more than a year ago, the diner was an abandoned shell, and now it symbolizes the renewal of Long Island City as surely […]
Detroitism: What Does 'Ruin Porn' Tell Us About the Motor City?
Detroitism: What Does ‘Ruin Porn’ Tell Us About the Motor City? The third major subgenre of the popular Detroit narrative is a backlash against the pornographic excesses of the Lament and is, at best, an attempt to find a new definition of urban vitality. The Utopians are well-meaning defenders of the city’s possibilities. Locally, they […]
How the down-on-its-luck city ended up becoming a stronghold for the Occupy movement—and whether the radicals will stick around when gentrification takes hold: Their small capitalist enterprise — named to evoke the famous anti-capitalist tract — represents another side of Oakland, albeit one that’s still in its infancy. Think of it as a less twee, […]
