Culture – The Urbanist Dispatch

eight small things that will have a big impact on philadelphia in 2015

Lee Stabert

March 3, 2015

2015, here we come! Flying Kite is taking a couple weeks off for the holidays, but we'll be back on January 6 with a fresh new issue. To tide you over, here are a couple of small things that will have a big imp...

Community leaders push to make Cincinnati the most immigrant-friendly city in America

Holly End

November 15, 2014

Culture

Alfonso Cornejo moved to Cincinnati from Mexico 26 years ago as a Procter & Gamble employee. Although he was bilingual, his accent elicited demands that he “speak American” when he requested assistance in l...

Why the Future Of Art is on City Streets

Tere Garcia

November 7, 2014

Community and Neighborhoods, Culture

Violence rates have increased markedly in Caracas, Venezuela. This ranks the city among the top five most dangerous in the world, not only for high homicide rates, robberies and kidnappings, but the hostility a...

Want to get people back to work? Fill the basic skills gap

Lee Chilcote

November 2, 2014

Culture, Economic Development

Low-income workers like Tawnee McCluskey often lack the basic skills needed to find a good job. To bridge the gap, experts says it's essential to invest in training. Yet despite millions of people out of work, ...

Why Transit Agencies Should Woo “Bohemian Boomers” and “Metro Moms”

Peyton Chung

September 23, 2014

Culture, Transportation

A new national survey released today by TransitCenter seeks to understand not just the who, but also the why, of Americans’ increasing transit use. The survey found that Americans’ feelings towards transit and ...

The glorious potential of cities; or, How eight square blocks can change the world

Claire Nelson

September 14, 2014

Culture

Last fall, David Simon -- creator of acclaimed television shows The Wire and Treme -- delivered an incendiary talk (is there any other kind from Simon?) about the alarming rise of American inequality at the Fes...

Close up of freshly built comb. Photo by Ironbee Collective on Flickr.

What’s the Buzz? How Honeybees Help Shape Urban Farming

Rachael Gilliland

August 11, 2014

Community and Neighborhoods, Culture, Featured, Sustainability

As consumers, we don’t always know where our food sources come from, or what helps supply it. As of late, the plight of the honeybee has lead to an influx of interest in what is happening in the bee world. To c...

A night view of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Campus Martius. Circa 1910. Photo from the Library of Congress.

How the rise of electricity transformed urban life in Detroit

Amy Elliott Bragg

August 8, 2014

Culture, Policy

Here's a famous story: Alex Dow, manager of the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit, saw promise in his young chief engineer, and in 1896, he invited the engineer to join him at a conference in New York. One...

The Myth of Policy Purity

Jordan Twardy

August 4, 2014

Culture, Featured, Policy

Ideological conflict is nothing new to American politics, but the severity of the gridlock it creates – 2013’s federal government shutdown, for instance – has become especially troubling. And while we gripe abo...

An image made available by Jihadist media outlet Welayat Raqqa on June 30, 2014, allegedly shows a member of the IS (Islamic state) militant group parading in a street in the northern rebel-held Syrian city of Raqqa. (Photo: AFP-Welayat Raqqa)

Raqqa province: Welcome to ISIS’ capital

Firas al-Hakkar

July 24, 2014

Culture, Featured

SIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) increased its grip on "Wilayat al-Raqqa", the capital of the Islamic State. It is setting the foundation of its rule through courts, resolving disputes between civilians, a...