George Steinmetz and Mathieu Hikaru Desan (Michigan): The Spontaneous Sociology of Detroit’s Hyper-Crisis. The death and life of urban America: Adam Gopnik reviews Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss; City on a Grid: How New York Became New York by Gerard Koeppel; The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s by Evan Friss; and The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the 21st Century by DW Gibson. Once mighty cities in decline: An auto giant’s exit brings the Rust Belt to its knees. Joel Rose on how resettled refugees help to “bring Buffalo back”. Nick Paumgarten on the death and life of Atlantic City. Kansas City offers a World Series title as proof of its resurgence. Nice downtowns — how did they get that way? Visitors think, “That's just how Seattle is”, but it wasn’t. Joel Anderson on how a brutal beating became the symbol of Oakland’s gentrification struggle. Natasha Vargas-Cooper on L.A.’s family-unfriendly family court. Lizette Alvarez on Assignment America: Little Havana. Elizabeth Kolbert on the siege of Miami: As temperatures climb, so, too, will sea levels.
The mothers of all disasters: Massive hurricanes striking Miami or Houston, earthquakes leveling Los Angeles or Seattle, deadly epidemics — meet the “maximums of maximums” that keep emergency planners up at night. Jesse A. Myerson on how homelessness, unaffordable urban real estate, devastating gentrification, and the housing bubble are all rooted in privatized housing. Inequality and the city: Is there any way to spread the benefits of our urban renaissance more widely? Sidewalk labs, a start-up created by Google, has bold aims to improve city living.
