Civic commons

We’re pleased to publish this guest post from Akron’s Jason Segedy.  It originally appeared on his blog Notes from the Underground. Drawing on his practical experience in a rust-belt city, he offers a compelling new insight on the casual way that “gentrification” is invoked in serious discussions about the future of our cities. By Jason

Neighborhoods are always changing; half of all renters move every two years. There’s a subtle perceptual bias that underlies many of the stories about gentrification and neighborhood change. The canonical journalistic account of gentrification focuses on the observable fact that different people now live in a neighborhood than used to live there at some previous

If it weren’t for cultural appropriation, would America have any culture at all? In Portland, two women opened a food cart business–Kook’s Burritos–selling burritos based on ones that they’d seen and tasted during a trip to Puerto Novo, Mexico. They were frank, telling reporters that they’d hung out watching local vendors prepare tortillas, to see if

Reducing segregation does seem to result in much more social interaction, as intermarriage patterns demonstrate Yesterday, we took a close and critical look at Derek Hyra’s claim that mixed-income, mixed-race communities fell short of improving the lot of the disadvantaged because of the persistence of what he called “micro-segregation.”  Even though they might live in

Gentrifying neighborhoods produce more mixing, but don’t automatically generate universal social interaction. What should we make of that? In one idealized view of the world, economically integrated neighborhoods would have widespread and deep social interactions among people from different backgrounds. We’d tend to be color-blind and class-blind, and no more (or less) likely to interact

Volunteering is one of the hallmarks of community; here are the cities with the highest rates of volunteerism The decline of the civic commons, the extent to which American’s engage with one another in the public realm, especially across class lines, has been much remarked upon. Our report, Less in Common, explores the many dimensions

Migration, especially by young adults, is increasing racial and ethnic diversity in US counties As we related last week, a new report from the Urban Institute quantifies the stark economic costs of racial and income segregation in the United States. Places with higher levels of segregation have lower incomes for African-Americans, lower rates of educational