Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

A big deal that’s not nearly big enough: what the “city of yes” will (and won’t) do

In January 2025, Urban Matters, Center of New York City Affairs's weekly journal of ideas and opinion, wrapped up a wide-ranging two-part interview with noted urban policy expert Richard McGahey on the likely impact of New York City’s newly adopted "City of Yes" zoning package intended to jumpstart housing production. ...
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Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

Asylum and the Hierarchy of Suffering

Limitations of the US migration framework

Even before Trump barred asylum seekers from the US-Mexico border by declaring all unauthorized border crossings to be “invasions,” American asylum was a system with no winners. Now, while migrants at the border are stripped of the meager options they previously had recourse to, it’s crucial to understand what it meant, until very ...
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Asylum and the Hierarchy of Suffering

In Search of the Sublime … Underground

How far can art carry us through New York City’s broken subway system?

Weekday mornings, as I walk to the 36th Street subway stop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, I quicken my pace, anxious that if I miss the train, I’ll be late for work; worried that if it’s too crowded, I won’t get a seat on the 40-minute commute that lies ahead. As ...
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In Search of the Sublime … Underground

Border Time

Policing movement in the Rio Grande Valley

The southern border of the United States has been policed intensively for over half a century. Donald Trump and many other global political leaders have narrowed their policy focuses from bordering more generally to building walls. Even short trips to the US-Mexico border make clear that the wall is not ...
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Border Time

Where the Avant-Garde Went to Grow

Behind the scenes of Becoming Bohemia: Greenwich Village, 1912–1923

We have really rich, deep collections of materials related to Greenwich Village, especially dealing with this period of the Village's history. When the wider public thinks of Bohemias or avant-garde settings, especially from that time period, the early twentieth century, their thoughts might gravitate towards Paris in the 1920s, or ...
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Where the Avant-Garde Went to Grow

Petro-Capitalist Status Quo

In Overshoot, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton show how governments have failed to stop the fossil fuel industry bulldozing through international emissions thresholds

Andres Malm and Wim Carton’s new book, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (Verso, 2024), is a thorough and unsparing account of the recent history and politics of the attempt to mitigate fossil fuels, and the reasons for its significant failure.  Both authors teach at Lund University in Sweden. ...
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Petro-Capitalist Status Quo

Migrants Are Parents and Children

New York parents are using mutual aid networks to welcome migrant families

Although New York can be a violent, unequal, and segregated city, radical acts of solidarity through mutual aid groups shape the experiences of those who live there and strive to transform it into a more livable place—especially for new arrivals. In the winter of 2023, just as the migrant shelter ...
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Migrants Are Parents and Children

Leaving Honduras

The legacy of US military and economic interference that continues to drive migration

As US border policy grows ever more restrictive, the Biden-Harris administration’s “Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America” strategy is commendable for aiming to tackle the inhumane conditions in Central America that are causing so many people in the region to uproot in the first place. The strategy ...
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Leaving Honduras

Immigration and the US Presidential Election

A conversation on the US-Mexico border, inflammatory rhetoric, and policies that can serve migrants and citizens alike

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have emphasized US-Mexico border security as one of the top concerns of their 2024 presidential campaigns. Why? In a conversation hosted by the New School for Social Research, Eugene Lang College, and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, politics and global studies professor ...
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Immigration and the US Presidential Election

Noncitizen Voting and the Politics of Common Sense in New York City

Can proposals to expand local voting to noncitizens survive in the era of Stop the Steal?

Even as Republican politicians continue to undermine faith in the U.S. electoral system by erroneously claiming the 2024 election will be “stolen” by undocumented immigrants, the New York Court of Appeals is quietly considering a law that would expand the right to vote in local elections to certain residents of ...
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Noncitizen Voting and the Politics of Common Sense in New York City

A Brief History of Travel Bans

What could follow a Trump victory in November?

On the campaign trail in 2016, Donald Trump promised retribution for the San Bernardino Isis attack in December 2015: he would enact a ban prohibiting the entry of Muslims into the country. It was, unfortunately, one of the campaign promises he made good on. In late January 2017, President Trump signed ...
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A Brief History of Travel Bans

“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition

Meet the infamously deep-pocketed, undocumented construction laborers building and then stealing American homes

Here’s a tip from the US political playbook: if your campaign is struggling, if you don’t have actual policies but “concepts of a plan,” if you secretly or openly wish for the “good ol’ days” when black people did “black jobs,” if you “forgot” to declare the lavish perks from ...
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“Blame It on the Immigrant”: The Housing Crisis Edition