Urban Environments Archives

Class, Hegemony, and the Will to End a Neighborhood

An excerpt from The Tears of Other People: A history and memoir of displacement in Portsmouth, New Hampshire

February 12, 2026 • by E. M. Ippolito

Why is it important to interpret Portsmouth's history of urban renewal as a history of class? So far, historians who have published work on the subject have chosen not to take this angle. All contemporary writing on Puddle Dock and the North End—the city's two neighborhoods destroyed by urban renewal—notes ...

Class, Hegemony, and the Will to End a Neighborhood

Literature

The Blue House

An excerpt from The Ocean in the Next Room

May 28, 2025 • by Sarah V. Schweig

I'm still here in the city I entered years ago.I've been in the city all this time.I don't look up and around much anymore.I've been studying philosophy and having a sonand killing time. I follow my son from roomto room in our two-room rental. While he sleeps,I kill a roach ...

Climate & Ecology

Reimagining Ecological Repair

A review of Laura J. Martin’s Wild by Design

May 26, 2025 • by Mairéad O’Donnell

The Disney Wilderness Preserve in Florida began as a corporate-led initiative to counteract wetland destruction caused by Disney’s expansion in the Orlando area. Launched in the early 1990s, the project aimed to restore nearly 12,000 acres of wetlands and uplands degraded by decades of cattle ranching, fire suppression, and hydrological ...

Climate & Ecology

The Islandization of Miami

Stephanie Wakefield’s new book explores what “urban resilience” programs get wrong about our future

April 22, 2025 • by Lily Chishan Wong

Do cities have a place in our future? Geographers such as Stephanie Wakefield have identified urbanization as both driver and product of the Anthropocene, the “geological time impacted by human activities.” The uneven capitalist productions of urban spaces, along with operational landscapes required to sustain urban life—such as global supply ...

Activism

Rent Is the Crisis

Framing it as a “housing crisis” ignores that from the perspective of its winners, the system works just fine

March 21, 2025 • by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis

Every first of the month, we hand over a share of our wages to meet our human need for housing. Our rents rise faster than our incomes, and inequality grows. Every first of the month, more tenants go without food, medication, and basic necessities to pay this tribute. More people ...

Interviews

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

March 18, 2025 • by Center for New York City Affairs and Richard McGahey

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. ...

Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

Habitats

Testing the Waters in Gotham

A look at how residents throughout the city’s history have chosen what to drink

March 20, 2024 • by Liviu Chelcea

The three forms of water distribution form a fluid archive of community formation, civic pride, and the many different possible ways New Yorkers can choose the water they drink....

Climate & Ecology

How Can Cities Drive Net-Zero Carbon Goals and Create Vibrant Urban Communities?

Nature-based solutions offer a way forward

March 13, 2024 • by Karen C. Seto

Cities must achieve four goals: minimize greenhouse gas emissions, foster low and net-zero carbon behaviors, minimize changes in land cover that increase local temperatures and exacerbate the urban heat island effect, and create livable and vibrant communities. ...

How Can Cities Drive Net-Zero Carbon Goals and Create Vibrant Urban Communities?

Disability

Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity

In an excerpt from The Architecture of Disability, the author considers the performance of disability in so-called “nature”

October 25, 2023 • by David Gissen

Challenging the physical inaccessibility of national parks might be reimagined as an opportunity to demonstrate the artifice of American nature more broadly. If disability rights are ultimately human rights, then the ideas presented here suggest new, unimagined alliances....

Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity

Interviews

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman and Marisa Budlong

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...

Migration

A City on Fire

Arson and neglect in 1970s Utica, New York

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman

Some residents still remember the bumper sticker: “Last one out of Utica, please turn out the lights.” Absentee landlords bought houses at auction—then hired people to burn them so they could collect the insurance money. And some owners torched their own homes. “Arson rates just skyrocketed,” Chief Ingersoll said. In ...

Urban Environments

Disney City, USA

Beware Disney’s new residential communities

February 28, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Disney last week announced a new plan to build entire residential communities, a major move into real estate that’s disconnected from its current theme parks and their surroundings. It’s calling the initiative “Storyliving.” The first of these neighborhoods will be in Rancho Mirage, California, and is supposed to include homes, a ...

Urban Environments

Class, Hegemony, and the Will to End a Neighborhood

An excerpt from The Tears of Other People: A history and memoir of displacement in Portsmouth, New Hampshire

The Blue House

An excerpt from The Ocean in the Next Room

Reimagining Ecological Repair

A review of Laura J. Martin’s Wild by Design

The Islandization of Miami

Stephanie Wakefield’s new book explores what “urban resilience” programs get wrong about our future

Rent Is the Crisis

Framing it as a “housing crisis” ignores that from the perspective of its winners, the system works just fine

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

Testing the Waters in Gotham

A look at how residents throughout the city’s history have chosen what to drink

How Can Cities Drive Net-Zero Carbon Goals and Create Vibrant Urban Communities?

Nature-based solutions offer a way forward

Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity

In an excerpt from The Architecture of Disability, the author considers the performance of disability in so-called “nature”

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

A City on Fire

Arson and neglect in 1970s Utica, New York

Disney City, USA

Beware Disney’s new residential communities

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