How paying people to be parents has created a baby boom in Finland. Decoding the maybe-too-flashy urban renewal of once-dangerous Medellín, Colombia. And why a long-standing rivalry between Boston and New York led to the first American subways. Here are today’s Urban Reads.
Ten years after photographing countless storefronts for their popular book, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, James and Karla Murray are returning to the same addresses for an update. The contrast in the pairs of images, each a decade apart, is striking.
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Could moving out of a bad neighborhood actually be worse for kids? A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that relocating families to a more affluent environment can cause children to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder—especially boys.
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Changes in Red Hook, violence in Kiev, and new ideas for Paris from mayoral candidates. Plus Bogotá bans cars for a week, California might divide into six states, and the surprising history of Hollywood. These are all the Urban Reads you need.
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Gentrification can’t stop, won’t stop. Artist and programmer Justin Blinder grabbed cached images from Google Street View featuring construction sites in Brooklyn and Manhattan over the past four years, then joined before-and-after pics together in a pretty eye-opening series he calls Vacated.
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"Is Harlem good now?" That’s the question that Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised chef Marcus Samuelsson gets asked the most about his neighborhood. In Sunday’s New York Times, Samuelsson wrote an insightful op-ed about watching Harlem change over the past decade.
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Those damn dot-commers are still mucking up San Fran, parents are passing along their dangerous pedestrian ways to the next generation, a giant suitcase is an eyesore in Red Square, and—sigh—we’re all so lonely. These things and more are What’s Ruining Our Cities.
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This week in What’s Ruining Our Cities: Racist mascots! Illegal apartments! Hedge fund slumlords! Basically everything you’d expect from some Sin City bargain bin fan fiction, except in Calfornia, China, and beyond.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
