The arrival of community development corporations in cities across the United States in the 1980s marked an important development in the history of cities. CDCs were particularly appealing to Black mayors elected on police reform agendas in the 1970s, combining the rhetoric of local control over economic development with a close working relationship with local police departments to create the Black Power city. In Detroit, the grassroots organization WE-PROS exemplified three currents shaping this city: grassroots neighborhood activism concerned with the effect of drugs and crime on property values, CDCs as an answer to the economic crisis of post-industrial cities, and the rise of community policing in response to the failure of police professionalism. However, WE-PROS’s focus on stabilizing property values also brought to bear on some of the city’s most precarious populations a police presence that criminalized daily life and displaced some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. These were the crime politics of community development. The implications of those politics became clear in November 1992, when police killed Malice Green in a neighborhood that had long been the focus of WE-PROS activism against the informal economy. Green’s death made public a knowledge about policing that had been submerged beneath the promise of community policing and its partnership with community development. That knowledge had remained active in the lives of people like Malice Greene even amid the rise of the Black Power city, with its promise of locally driven economic development and a changed police department.
This essay traces the debate among Black intellectuals and artists over the role of numbers gambling within Black public life. Over the course of the Twentieth Century an array of Black intellectuals grappled with the dual nature of the numbers game as both a vulnerability prompting mass arrests and encouraging wasteful spending, and as a resource providing jobs and funds for politics and business formation. The dilemma presented by numbers gambling is ultimately reflective of the restrictions placed on Black life in labor, business, politics, and leisure.
“Illicit work,” the category of analysis for this special issue, does double duty: first, by focusing on the intertwined relations of labor and racial capitalism that specifically flourish under conditions of criminalization. In this valence, “illicit” means illegal. But “illicit” also speaks to the cultural discourse about the criminal world, and the stories that journalists, police, and politicians told about criminalized places that justified state violence against the people who lived there. “Illicit” here registers the social and cultural dimensions of the forbidden, where drugs, gambling, and other so-called vices are reliable sites of white moral panic. Contributors to this special issue grapple with the power of, and contests over, the discursive representation of the places where illegal work happened—that is, in criminalized Black and Brown neighborhoods. By excavating the multivalent perspectives of “illicit work,” these scholars expose the ways that the licit and the illicit—or the legal and the “criminal”—develop in tandem and profit from each other.
The 1980s witnessed the rise of new protest movements across Europe, often influenced by punk and anarchism. While activism often ended in violent confrontations, contentious resistance was less prevalent in Sweden, where activists established and operated social centers through legally binding contracts and formalized associations, shaped by Sweden's historical tradition of sk & ouml;tsamhet (i.e., respectability and accountability). This article examines two associations in two urban areas in Sweden: Ultrahuset in Stockholm and Vinterpalatset in Malm & ouml;. Through the framework of "welfare-state anarchism," we highlight the dilemma in autonomous activism within a social democratic context: the tension between sustaining autonomy and preserving institutional legitimacy. While both groups were embedded in broader anarchist and punk milieus, they adopted different strategies in response to the local authorities. When evictions loomed, tensions with municipal actors escalated. Vinterpalatset preserved its cooperative stance, relocated, and continued its work; Ultrahuset chose confrontation, ultimately occupying and setting fire to the building.
After the Mexican Revolution, statesmen and educators envisioned a new urban complex for the National Autonomous University of Mexico to expand public higher education and support the consolidation of the postrevolutionary state. Although construction of Ciudad Universitaria (CU), or University City, would not begin until 1950 due to political upheaval and university-state conflicts, this article examines unbuilt plans and sketches of the project that circulated in the interim decades to trace the urban planning models that shaped it, including other Ibero-American ciudades universitarias, Beaux-Arts architecture, and the Garden City Movement. Despite state rhetoric insisting that the project reflect a Mexican national character, this article shows that early plans drafted between 1928 and 1942 primarily reflected international models because the aesthetics of Mexican revolutionary nationalism were still in development. Although the early plans were never realized, they served as crucial antecedents against which planners eventually imagined a Ciudad Universitaria imbued with Mexicanidad.
In November 1872, a fire devastated sixty-five acres of Boston's commercial district. Much of the existing scholarship has perpetuated a false narrative that the disaster was an unlikely event, a "perfect storm" that overcame supposedly fireproof buildings. This article challenges that view by re-examining primary sources, including fire insurance records, investigative reports, and newspaper accounts. It traces the popular incorrect narrative back to the immediate aftermath of the fire, showing how this historical myth has influenced historiographical interpretations of the fire for over 150 years. Using this case study, the article illustrates how historical memory is actively constructed and may be influenced more strongly by beliefs about the past than by historical fact. Ultimately, this work provides a new lens for understanding not just Boston's past, but also the broader processes of urban disaster and recovery and the complex nature of historical memory.
In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire established a centralized quarantine system to control epidemic diseases across its territories, including Anatolia, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East. This article examines the quarantine stations in Gaza and Al-Khalil, in historic Palestine, as key examples of Ottoman public health architecture. Constructed in the same years, 1847-1848, these stations shared planning principles while displaying distinct architectural features shaped by their urban and geographic contexts. Based on archival sources, original documents, and architectural analysis, the study explores how these stations embodied the spatial implementation of Ottoman medical policy in provincial settings. It argues that these facilities served not only as barriers to disease but also as symbols of a systematic, state-directed public health strategy. As an early output of a PhD thesis, this article contributes to the limited literature on the architectural history of Ottoman healthcare systems and their role in managing pandemics.
This article explores the historical context and decision-making process behind the selection of tree species for Avenida da Liberdade, Lisbon's iconic boulevard constructed in the late nineteenth century. The City Council's decision to establish a grand avenue was influenced by Lisbon's modernization, inspired by Parisian boulevards, and driven by the historical circumstances, particularly the reuse of trees from the Passeio P & uacute;blico, rather than the theoretical norms of the time that favored uniformity in tree species for their practical and visual benefits. The article examines three key aspects: the conception of the avenue as a symbol of progress, the work of the appointed committee and its decision-making influenced by the period's scientific and artistic theories, and the specific tree species chosen, highlighting the socio-natural factors that influenced their selection. It argues that the choice of species, largely overlooked in historiography, reveals a nuanced interplay of practical constraints and urban planning ideals.
This article discusses the challenges that Amsterdam's municipal government encountered and how it responded to them from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. The presence of heroin addicts and radical squatters alongside the effects of suburbanization and deindustrialization raised the specter of an ungovernable city. Mayors and heads of department were also confronted with conflicting expectations from the public and problems of internal coordination while remaining dependent on the nation-state for legislation and funding. Yet, a new approach to governing Amsterdam was gradually emerging, one that brought problems to a manageable level rather than attempting to solve them, improved bureaucratic efficiency, and prioritized creating a business-friendly environment. This redefinition of municipal government adopted some neoliberal elements while retaining a recognizably social democratic profile. The actions of Amsterdam's leaders should be situated in their contemporary context rather than blamed for the very different problems that Amsterdam is facing today.
By the 1920s, apartments were among the prototypical living arrangements for urban tenants in cities like Chicago. These tenants found their domestic lives constrained by the spatial realities of apartments and the landlord-tenant relationship. Through an examination of complaints filed with one landlord across multiple apartment buildings in Chicago, this article explores how tenants wrestled with constrained domesticity and the responsibilities of landlords. In doing so, tenants took up a long-running debate about the obligations of landlords, including to regulate the social world of buildings. Through complaints, tenants leveraged the property rights of their landlord to their own ends. They pushed for their landlord to police their neighbors as a means of enforcing gender and sexual norms, while upholding racial categories and segregation. This article argues that tenants worked to shape, contain, and harness the power of their landlord in ways that offer new perspectives on tenant activism and urban domesticity.
This article analyzes how the rapid urban and suburban development of Oakland, from 1900 through 1930, occurred through the expansion of racially restrictive subdivisions in the Oakland hills and Berkeley. By analyzing urban and suburban environments, it becomes clear how real estate corporations developed the use of racial covenants as part of their city planning enterprise, a project which occurred between 1900 and 1930 while also influencing the rise of restrictive covenants in Los Angeles. The article intervenes in urban and suburban history by considering how racially restrictive covenants offered a flexible form of racial and class segregation in California, where the state's multiracial population-with a significant Chinese, Japanese, and Black population-sought new housing in a discriminatory and antagonistic market.
This article examines how the materiality of the public mortuary reshaped the urban governance of death and gave rise to the hygienic modernity in modern Shanghai. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Shanghai Municipal Council had built mortuaries in the Shanghai International Settlement to uphold public health and facilitate the administration of justice. As the number of Chinese people in the Settlement skyrocketed, the Council endeavored to extend mortuary-based death management from the Westerners to the Chinese population. The public mortuary functioned as a node within Shanghai's expanding urban infrastructure system, including the hospital, cemetery, and police force. Meanwhile, the mortuary exposed the contestation between the Shanghai Municipal Council, the medical professionals, Chinese local authorities, and Chinese residents, whose cultural and material practices concerning corpse examination and death rituals often diverged from the mortuary-based ones. By foregrounding the materiality and infrastructural politics of death management, this article argues that the public mortuary constituted a contested site through which various actors negotiated and appropriated the meanings of death and ultimately contributed to the local formation of hygienic modernity in modern Shanghai.
This article investigates the genesis and evolution of the Plaza de Santa Ana in Madrid, emphasizing its interconnection with the neighboring theater, the Teatro Espa & ntilde;ol. The origins of the latter can be traced back to the establishment of the Corral de Comedias del Pr & iacute;ncipe in 1583. The work integrates methodologies such as archival documentary research with others conventional to the discipline of Architectural Drawing. For this purpose, the period under discussion is defined beginning in 1808, before the demolition of the Carmelite convent of Santa Ana, and ending in 1943, when the first integral redesign of the garden was carried out. This article concludes that the theater's presence had a detectable influence on the plaza's formation and transformation. Likewise, the article graphically determines the evolution of the square from 1808 to 1943 and the transformation of the theater's fa & ccedil;ade from 1869, when the definitive opening of the plaza took place.
This article examines the critical yet overlooked contributions of women to Milwaukee's fair housing activism during the mid-twentieth century, challenging the male-centric narrative of civil rights leadership. Through a focus on two pivotal figures, Vel Phillips and Betty Glosson, this study reveals how Black women navigated and reshaped systemic racial and gender injustices. Vel Phillips's institutional advocacy and Betty Glosson's grassroots organizing demonstrate the complementary roles women played in driving systemic change. Drawing on primary sources, including oral histories and radio transcripts, the article highlights how caregiving and community-building served as political resistance, offering a relational perspective missing in traditional historiography. By engaging with secondary literature on Black women's leadership and grassroots feminism, this study bridges historiographical gaps and emphasizes oral history and inclusive methodologies to uncover unsung heroines. It emphasizes the importance of these contributions, offering insights for modern social justice movements to adopt inclusive strategies and leadership practices.
The spatial segregation of populations is a common theme in assessing the assimilation of an ethnic minority. The Russian minority in nineteenth-century Finland is an interesting case, in part because Russians were a minority in Finland but a majority in the whole empire, and in part because the minority contained a range of social strata. The 1880-1917 study period was chosen because of the political relevance of the issue at this time. The evolution of spatial segregation in Vyborg is studied using accurate tax documents geolocated using contemporaneous cadastral maps. Segregation decreased from 1880 to 1900 and increased from 1900 to 1917. The results suggest changes in the built environment played a role in the change of spatial segregation. The intermarriage rate between Russians and other groups also decreased during the period. It is likely that increasing segregation was related to the political tensions between Finland and Russia.
In 2020, an estimated 1,500 families built an informal settlement (campamento) on a landfill in Santiago, Chile. This article experiments with an interscalar approach within a critical disaster studies framework to examine nested layers of crisis and opportunity that unfolded over multiple time scales and geographies and contributed to the settlement's creation. The landfill serves as a site of analysis to generate perspectives on the intersections and disjunctions of phenomena within and across temporal and spatial scales connecting the landfill, the campamento, and transnational geographies of disaster.
This paper examines the representation of urban landscapes in Bogot & aacute;, Quito, and Lima between 1910 and 1930 through visual media, particularly advertisements and caricatures. It explores how these images reflected and shaped perceptions of modernity, nationalism, and urban development. The study analyzes the tension between idealized depictions of progress in advertisements and critical representations in cartoons, highlighting the role of visual culture in reinforcing and contesting dominant narratives. The research focuses on the use of national symbols, monuments, and new technologies like automobiles in constructing an image of modern, patriotic cities. It also discusses how these representations addressed the complex relationship between local identities and global influences. The paper concludes that urban imagery during this period served as a battleground for ideological and cultural expression, reflecting the aspirations, contradictions, and challenges of rapidly changing Andean cities.
The sounds of begging permeated medieval urban spaces. For centuries, these sounds were tolerated or even encouraged. City residents acknowledged that begging was a practical necessity, helping the impoverished attract the alms they needed to survive. Moreover, Christian teachings emphasized that the sounds of begging also aided listeners, inspiring the faithful to perform the good works necessary for salvation. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, secular and ecclesiastical authorities in German cities began passing laws restricting the times and places that those living in poverty could request charitable assistance. In doing so, these laws recharacterized the sounds of begging as intrusive noise. Scholars have long noticed similar redefinitions of urban noise in the early modern and modern eras; analyzing the late medieval soundscape, this article demonstrates that changing perceptions of the sounds of poverty began centuries earlier, contributing to the delegitimization of the voices of the poor.
Synthesizing demographic data, retail census data, and archival sources, this study demonstrates how retail reflects shifting phases of capitalism as it responds to demographic, cultural, labor market, industry, and macro-economic forces. It examines the relationship between industrialization, deindustrialization, and retailing in Newcastle, New South Wales, an Australian "Steel City." Early retailing and consumption in Newcastle were inextricably linked to its industrial economy. Manufacturing decline in the city during the 1980s negatively impacted the retail trade, even as the city's shopping landscape was reconfigured by national retail and retail property firms. Throughout its history, retailing in Newcastle was also conditioned by its relationship with the state's economic center, Sydney. This study contributes to conversations about the place of small cities in national stories, the localized effects of industrialization and deindustrialization on practices of consumption, and the utility of retail for exploring processes of urban change.
This article argues that urban governance in its modern form emerged through the coherence of three complementary elements: state-backed capital growth, austere administrations of social services, and an encompassing police state that worked to legitimize itself as an ally and protector of commercial capitalism. While this dynamic might sound familiarly current, this article details how its roots were well visible in the post-Civil War United States. Municipal government abetted capital growth by adopting an unquestioned acceptance that what was good for business was good for the public. Crucially, the "public" in the postbellum United States was not a utopic or abstracted sanctuary in which a cohesive citizenry gained equal access. In investigating the uneven deployment of resources allocated by city agencies and emergent inequalities within booming commercial relations, it becomes clear that the public good referred to the output generated through the marriage between local government, capital, and municipal police.
