In the Media
Inequality, the Pandemic, and Policy: A Way Forward?
How do we respond to inequalities in cities worldwide exacerbated by the pandemic? Professor Caitlin Zaloom is interviewed on the podcast, Unequal Worlds, offering a critical analysis of the pre-existing conditions that lead to the current crises, exposing the way inequalities have exploded and also offering suggestions for the ways forward – ways to reform, reconnect and rebuild a more equal future for us all. GRIP, Global Research Program on Inequality
How Immigrants Are Fighting Housing Insecurity and Remaking Spanish Urban Politics
Professor Sophie Gonick is featured as a “Public Thinker” in a full length interview about her cutting-edge scholarship on immigration, financialization, and housing insecurity in Spain and worldwide. The reflects on “the production of exclusion and inequality under conditions of debt” and the role that immigrants have played in resisting precarious housing conditions and shaping a new urban politics in Spain. Public Books
Exploring the Connections Between Native Americans and the City
From ancient metropolises like Pueblo Bonito and Tenochtitlán to the twenty-first century Oceti Sakowin encampment of NoDAPL water protectors, Native people have built and lived in cities—a fact little noted in either urban or Indigenous histories. By foregrounding Indigenous peoples as city makers and city dwellers, as agents and subjects of urbanization, the essays in this volume simultaneously highlight the impact of Indigenous people on urban places and the effects of urbanism on Indigenous people and politics.
The new book, Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization, co-edited by NYU urban and Native American historian Andrew Needham, grew out of a conference co-sponsored by the NYU Cities Collaborative. The contributors—Native and non-Native, anthropologists and geographers as well as historians—use the term “Indian cities” to represent collective urban spaces established and regulated by a range of institutions, organizations, churches, and businesses. All the contributions to this volume show how, from colonial times to the present day, Indigenous people have shaped and been shaped by urban spaces. Collectively they demonstrate that urban history and Indigenous history are incomplete without each other.
On his program, Behind the News, available on Apple Podcasts, journalist Doug Henwood interviews Professors Caitlin Zaloom and Thomas Sugrue on their new book, The Long Year: A 2020 Reader.
How the 2020 Crises, Shaped by Pre-Existing Social Conditions, Will Transform the World
An innovative collection of essays that grew out of a Cities Collaborative project on the 2020 crises has been published by Columbia University Press. In The Long Year, NYU urbanists, Thomas Sugrue and Caitlin Zaloom, bring together some of the world’s most incisive thinkers to excavate 2020’s buried crises, revealing how they must be confronted in order to achieve a more equal future. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls for the defunding of police and the refunding of communities; Keisha Blain demonstrates why the battle against racism must be global; and Adam Tooze reveals that COVID-19 hit hardest where inequality was already greatest and welfare states weakest. Yarimar Bonilla, Xiaowei Wang, Simon Balto, Marcia Chatelain, Gautam Bhan, Ananya Roy, and others offer insights from the factory farms of China to the elite resorts of France, the meatpacking plants of the Midwest to the overcrowded hospitals of India. Contributors include Cities Collaborative members Sophie Gonick on urban vacancy in the pandemic, Gianpaolo Biaocchi on the affordable housing crisis, and Eric Klinenberg on the need for social solidarity.
Three Cities Collaborative Essays Selected for Best American Magazine Writing 2021 Anthology
Three essays commissioned by the NYU Cities Collaborative for its recent series, Crisis Cities, in Public Books, were selected for inclusion in the anthology, Best American Magazine Writing, 2021. Essays by Adam Tooze on the impact of the pandemic on the global economy, Margaret O’Mara on the rise of remote work, and NYU urban sociologist, Eric Klinenberg on the necessity of social solidarity were among the few selected from hundreds of submissions. The book will be published in early 2022 by Columbia University Press.
Detroit Bankruptcy Film wins $200,000 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize
A documentary chronicling how Detroit clawed its way out of the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history on Tuesday won the 2021 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. In “Gradually, Then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit” filmmakers Sam Katz and James McGovern tell the tale of Detroit’s bankruptcy filing in 2013 and an American city as it descended into financial crisis. The film’s creative team includes NYU Cities Collaborative Director Thomas Sugrue, who serves as co-producer and chief historical consultant. The film will be released next year. Detroit Free Press
Cities Collaborative Director elected to Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees
NYU professor Thomas Sugrue, was elected to the Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees. One of the oldest American foundations, the Russell Sage Foundation was established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” The foundation dedicates itself to strengthening the methods, data, and theoretical core of the social sciences as a means of diagnosing social problems and improving social policies. It also funds researchers at other institutions and supports programs intended to develop new generations of social scientists. Russell Sage Foundation
Cities Collaborative Is 2021 National Magazine Award Finalist
The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) named Pre-Existing Conditions: What 2020 Reveals About Our Urban Future, curated by Cities Collaborative director Thomas Sugrue, as one of five finalists for the 2021 National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media (the Ellie Awards) in the Single Topic Issue category. The series in Public Books brings together major scholars from around the world commenting on the pandemic, policing, politics, and protest. The 56th annual awards honor magazines and websites that consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative techniques, noteworthy enterprise and imaginative design. ASME will celebrate the Ellie Awards and honor finalists on Thursday, June 10th.
ASME
What Happens When 10 Million Tenants Can’t Make Rent?
In a New York Times opinion piece, Gianpaolo Biaocchi and Jacob Carlson argue that to solve the current crisis in affordable housing across the United States, the U.S. should expand social housing. New York Times
Crisis Cities: The Impact of 2020 on Urban Life Symposium with Public Books
In a symposium organized by the Cities Collaborative on the crises of 2020, nineteen major humanists and social scientists grapple with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, police violence and protests, economic insecurity, and political dysfunction on cities worldwide. Contributors of nineteen original essays include Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Eric Klinenberg, Ananya Roy, Natalia Molina, Marcia Chatelain, Rodrigo Nunes, as well as Cities Collaborative members Thomas Sugrue and Sophie Gonick. The symposium, along with other essays, will be published as a book with Columbia University Press in fall 2021. Public Books
Biden Wants to Unite the Country: How Can He Do It?
One of 20 thought leaders invited by Politico to provide advice for the new administration, Thomas Sugrue argues that “improving access to affordable housing will help to bring the country together by narrowing the huge racial wealth gaps that bitterly divide America, as families who pay less for housing will have more money to spend and save. Stable housing has many other pluses: better health, less crime, greater political participation.” Politico Magazine
The Case for a Social Housing Development Authority
Gianpaolo Biaocchi argues that to avoid massive evictions spurred by the coronavirus and to provide long-term community stability, a team of researchers is calling for the creation of a new federal housing authority. Outlined in a newly released white paper, the agency would purchase distressed real estate and transfer it to cooperatives, non-profits, and community land trusts. NYU News
Sophie Gonick discusses the implications of commercial vacancy in pandemic ravaged cities. “Vacancy,” she concludes, “reveals how the city privileges property over personhood, the real-estate mogul over the overall well-being of the city or the neighborhood.” Public Books
Preexisting Conditions: What 2020 Reveals About Our Urban Future
Thomas Sugrue writes that “just as COVID-19 is particularly dangerous to populations with preexisting conditions, the virus has ferociously swept through urban areas because of their preexisting social conditions.” Public Books
What Can the Government Do To Revive Distressed Neighborhoods?
Kimberley Johnson discusses the needs of impoverished urban neighborhoods and how the federal government has attempted to channel investments to cities, with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal. Federal programs have worked best “where there’s a lot of close collaboration between investors, local governments, community groups, that really are focused on what works best for a particular community.” Minnesota Public Radio
Mit Geheimniskrämerei zum Erfolg
In an era where politicians and professors alike put a value on transparency, Daniel Juette offers some historical perspective. “In the early modern period, a government was seen as competent and responsible precisely when it kept secrets or even hoarded them.” SRF: Swiss Radio and Television