World's Tiniest Library Pops Up In New York City

New York's Wonderful Map of Noise

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/04/yo-im-trying-sleep-here-new-yorks-wonderful-map-noise/5279/

The Need for More Supermarkets in New York

Special Report

Key Findings
Access to food is not evenly distributed in New York. Many people have to travel excessive
distances to buy food at a supermarket.

The uneven distribution of food in New York disproportionately affects large numbers
of low-income people.

There is a connection between diabetes and lack of supermarket access.



Weekly Sales Volume for Supermarkets

Library To Sell Forest City-Adjacent Branches

Brooklyn library lost to developers


http://observer.com/2013/02/a-ratner-in-the-stacks/

New York's 'Affordable Housing' Isn't Always Affordable

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/02/new-york-affordable-housing-isnt-always-affordable/4757/

The End of the Neighborhood School

Kids being uprooted from neighborhood schools are often the ones that can least handle the sudden change. "A lot of the children who are affected by this trend are already at risk because of poverty, drug abuse, violence, family upheaval, lack of healthcare," says Julianne Robertson King, a mother of four who lives in D.C.'s Ward 5, which is set to see four schools close this year. "These are people who have not been able to capitalize on the promise of America. When you remove one thing that they can count on... ."

According to researchers from the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute, if these students are sent to a similarly under-performing school, test scores will remain low. Moreover, students are more likely to jump around between schools after their first school is shuttered, and may stop attending school altogether.

Five large school districts saw charter school enrollment increases averaging 17 percent over the 2011-12 school year: Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

According to a report commissioned last year by D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, despite geographic disparities, two-thirds of all students attend schools within or adjacent to their neighborhood cluster. (For traditional public schools, 74 percent of students stayed within their neighborhood cluster; in charter schools, it was 57 percent.)

"One of the biggest things is the community aspect of it," explains Garrison PTA President Ann McLeod. "You really meet more of your neighbors that way. It helps you enjoy your neighborhood more, you are more rooted in your neighborhood, you've got resources for your kids to have more friends who live around them."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/02/end-neighborhood-school/4687/

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

515 Malcolm X Boulevard
New York, NY 10037-1801
(212) 491-2200

Class-Divided Cities: Los Angeles Edition

Following the pattern we saw in the first post in this series on New York, L.A. too is divided and segmented by class. But unlike New York's pattern, with its heavy creative class concentration at the core in Manhattan and surrounding parts of Brooklyn and Jersey City, L.A.'s creative class, much of which is no doubt affiliated with the film and television industry, is more spread out along the coast. That said, L.A.'s class geography does not conform to a typical urban-suburban pattern, with lower-wage service workers concentrated in the urban core and the more affluent creative class at the suburban fringe. The pattern of creative class clustering seen in New York does carry over but is expressed in different forms. There are creative class pockets in the city and its downtown as well as in coastal suburbs.

The Trendification of Brooklyn and the Perils of a Successful Urban Brand

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/08/trendification-brooklyn-and-perils-successful-urban-brand/2973/

http://gis.nyc.gov/nycha/im/wmp.do;jsessionid=BA9E72EE1F4FFFACDC1C1D65268A795D?

Interactive Map: Where New Yorkers Complain About Rats Most

http://gothamist.com/2013/01/02/have_you_become_complacent_to_the_r.php

What City Skies Would Look Like Without Light Pollution

Ground Zero

Artist Thierry Cohen
http://thierrycohen.com/pages/work/starlights.html

Can Brooklyn gentrify the right way?

“There’s nothing wrong with change, as long as we’re seeing real benefits for people of color, who are the vast majority of longtime residents and shoppers in the area,” said Alvin Bartolomey, a board member of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, a nonprofit organization with a membership in downtown Brooklyn’s public housing communities.

Brian Browdie