Annette Miller, a longtime resident of West Oakland’s Ghost Town neighborhood, has witnessed the dramatic transformation of the city as changes sweep the block she’s lived on for over 50 years.
cities
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Guardians of Ghost Town
Longtime West Oakland resident Annette Miller has witnessed the dramatic transformation of the city as changes over the past few decades have swept the block she’s lived on for over 50 years.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Evictionland: More and More Americans Experience Eviction, and Gentrification is Partly to Blame
In this essay supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Joseph Williams investigates the increasingly deft mechanisms at work evicting lower-income apartment dwellers in rapidly gentrifying cities, while chronicling his own descent from white collar Politico reporter living in a luxury apartment, to jobless, homeless man.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How the 1970s Could Vanish from Vancouver
Brutalist architecture — heavy on concrete and blocky shapes — used to be polarizing. In Vancouver, where land is scarce and developers are bulldozer-happy, it’s in the process of disappearing.
Posted inNonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
‘Oakland Used to Be More Funky’: Where Have All the Artists Gone?
The staff at Laney Tower take a close look at the past, present, and future of Oakland’s artistic community.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Vanishing Point
“Without the right kind of help, Oakland could lose yet another piece of its vibrant, artistic legacy.” As affordable residences and art spaces are becoming increasingly scarce, artists in Oakland are forced to move elsewhere. Laney Tower journalists take a look at the history, present, and uncertain future of the city’s arts and culture scene.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
New York in the 1970s Gave Us Hip Hop, Madonna, and the Chip on Trump’s Shoulder
“You bang your head against the wall to try to get some nice buildings up, and what happens? Everybody comes after you.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Gotham Gave Us Trump
New York’s tumultuous `70s and `80s taught Donald Trump about the power of the politics of fear — and very little about what makes cities work.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
In Bed-Stuy, the Ghost of Robert Moses is Alive and Well
Gentrification is about displacement — but also about marketing and invisibility.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Price Point that Would Guarantee Exclusivity
In Brooklyn, historically black Bedford-Stuyvesant has been experiencing rapid gentrification: “As a new order has emerged, the ghosts of the previous one are everywhere, but their echoes are getting smaller, snuffed out by the tides.”