Between the Lines Archive.
Recommended reads and blog posts from the Urban Renewal Center from 2017 to April 2020.
New York’s Forgotten Dead.
New York uses prison labor to bury the bodies.
COVID And Housing.
The pandemic is exacerbating the affordable housing shortage.
COVID hits Navajo Nation.
Navajo Nation has the third highest infection rate behind N.Y., and N.J.
Who’s “Essential?”
Which work should counts as essential right now, and which shouldn’t.
April 8, 2020
“Inclined To Purtrefaction.”
A history of how marginalized groups are demonized for diseases.
COVID Hits Minorities.
Chicago rallies a Rapid Response Team for black neighborhoods hit hard.
Pandemic Profiteering.
The World Bank’s “Pandemic Bonds” program backfires.
Prisons Face COVID.
A disaster looms for prisons when it comes to Coronavirus.
February 27, 2020
Monacan Nation Receives Federal Grant for Housing.
Seven Nations in Virginia receive $1 million to build affordable housing.
Mapping America’s Climate Migrants.
By 2100, some 13 million Americans are expected to be displaced.
The Virginian-Pilot leaves Norfolk.
After over 150 years, the paper says farewell to its home in Norfolk.
As small towns decline, prisons expand.
Rural incarceration rates have increased as rural economies contract.
What We’re Watching: Separate & Unequal.
December 19, 2019
The Dire Situation of The California Homeless Camp
Three months in an encampment in San Francisco.
Climate Gentrification on the Horizon
As sea levels rise, so do fears around living on borrowed time.
The Right to Eviction Counsel
Free legal representation to low-income residents facing eviction.
How School Zones Segregate our Schools
Suburban & Urban Racial Divides are Alive and Well in School Districts
What We’re Watching:
PUSH
“This is not gentrification, it's a different kind of monster.” This film follows UN Special Rapporteur Leilani Farha as she uncovers the way private equity firms are buying up properties, raising rental costs, and contributing to a global shortage of adequate affordable housing- a whole other side of the gentrification story rarely glimpsed.
July 26th, 2019
Scientists build on sacred land.
Despite protests, scientists ignore Native Hawaiian’s plea to respect Mauna Kea.
Challenging Gentrification’s Displacement
New study claims the effects of neighborhood change are positive.
Scooter Hell: The Death of the Sidewalk.
Burnings, trashings, hangings- anti-scooter vigilantes appear ready to fight.
Plight of the Baltimore Squeegee Kids
How Baltimore’s youth became pawns in a racist culture war.
From the URC Library:
Black, White, and Brown by Forrest “Hap” White.
Two movements make the 1950s in Norfolk, Virginia so remarkable: the voracious local attack upon urban blight, and the ferocious state resistance to desegregation in its public schools.
June 20th, 2019
Insurance Companies Redline Black Insurance
Prudential cuts the worth of black insurance policies
de Blasio Caves to Big Money on Public Housing
Despite posturing, private money does little to help poor New Yorkers.
Harlem builds an African burial ground
A bus depot is being prepared to honor enslaved and free African people.
9 Slave Testimonies on Jefferson Davis’ birthday
Five men and four women interviewed in Alabama in 1937
From the URC Library: Biopiracy by Vandana Shiva
One of the characteristics of reductionist biology is to declare organisms and their functions useless on the basis of ignorance of their structure and function. Thus, crops and trees are declared “weeds.” Forests and cattle breeds are declared “scrub.” And DNA whose role is not understood is called “junk DNA.” To write off the major part of the molecule as junk because of our ignorance is to fail to understand biological processes…
May 30th, 2019
Norfolk taps St. Louis non-profit to help the displaced.
A year late there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s another train.
Chicago Builds Public Housing into Libraries.
Healthy neighborhood housing based on books.
Educating for Environmental Racism
Norfolk State University examines the role of race in environmental justice.
Urban Agriculture Has Provided Little Benefit
But this can change. Greener roofs might give us greener thumbs.
From the URC Library: Nightwalking.
“Who walks alone in the streets at night? The sad, the mad, the bad. The lost,the lonely. The hypomanic, the catatonic. The sleepless, the homeless. All the city’s internal exiles. ‘The night has always been the time for daylight’sdispossessed’, writes Bryan Palmer, ‘- the deviant, the dissident, the different.’ Solitary strolling at night in the city by both men and women has, from timeimmemorial, been interpreted as a sign of moral, social or spiritual dereliction.”
May 14th, 2019
Google Wants to Build a City.
Shell companies & data violations. The pitfalls are many, the solutions few.
When Did We Start Paying to Park Our Cars?
A quick read about that curbside time bomb.
Jakarta Has Had Enough Flooding.
Faced with rising sea levels, Indonesia is eyeing a new spot for its capital.
Long Commutes Are Bad for Kids.
Less sleep, less exercise, but more time with your kids?
From the URC Library: On the 33rd Anniversary of Chernobyl
Many left, these women stayed. On the 33rd Anniversary of Chernobyl. see how these resilient women live proudly in the evacuated Chernobyl “Dead Zone.”
May 1st 2019
How to Build a City That Doesn’t Flood?
Turn it into a sponge
D.C. housed the homeless in upscale apartments.
It hasn’t gone as planned
What Charter Schools See in Opportunity Zones.
Using tax incentives to fund new schools
Hampton Roads’ China Workaround
Rising prices for curbside pickup
From the URC Library: Sweetness and Power
What the history of sugar can teach us about imperialism, race, and purity.
URC at the St. Paul’s Q&A.
Challenges and promise facing community redevelopment.
April 10th 2019
Chicago Demolishes Its Public Housing
And where the residents move to is far from better.
Gentrification Is An Emergency, Sometimes.
Where gentrification is hitting hard, and where it isn’t.
Marietta Demolishes Its Public Housing
Is it gentrification if nobody cares?
Trash Picking for A Living
In San Francisco, making money from your billionaire-neighbor’s trash.
From the URC Library: What do you do with 5 billion gallons of waste?
A waste treatment plant so big, it has its own weather.
April 2nd 2019
St. Paul’s Area Restoration.
Lewis Webb weighs in on the community challenges facing Norfolk.
Indigenous Life On the US-Mexico border.
An increasingly difficult life for people here long before there was a US, Mexico, or border.
The Dark Side of Sand.
A precious part of the environment we encounter everyday, traded just like oil, with the same disastrous consequences.
No Longer the World’s Waste Basket.
After China stopped importing the world’s waste, global recycling has stalled. Recycling companies in the United States scramble.
From the URC Library: A History of America’s Favorite Bad Habit
How America shaped the doughnut. And more importantly, how the doughnut shaped America.
2018
The Urban Renewal Center is located on unceded Powhatan Confederacy land.
Citing a report from ChurchClarity.org, NEWSWEEK proclaims that (anti-LGBT), “None of America’s 100 largest churches are LGBT-affirming and almost all of them are led by white men,” noting that, according to the site....”