Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012 documentary unveiled the many witting and unwitting villains, including urban poverty, public policy enforced racial segregation, and urban disinvestment in favor of the White Suburban Dream.
Tiny Houses, although lauded as a green way forward in a world covered in wasteful McMansions and debt enslaving rent payments, must overcome health, safety, and building standard regulations that still consider this form of housing either illegal or difficult to approve. Alyse Nelson charts a way through the red tape.
In honor of Labor Day and the continuing inequality in the U.S. economic system, Christopher Ketcham’s essay was published a Occupy Wall Street was taking off in 2011. The problem continues: money given out in Wall Street bonuses in 2014 was twice the amount all minimum-wage workers earned combined.
The Brazilian government’s militarized efforts to clean up Rio de Janeiro’s notoriously dangerous favelas is giving hope to some people living there, while others question the violent tactics and the whether it will make a difference. We provide counterpoint to Joshua Hammer’s 2014 investigation.
A documentary film, “Dogtown Redemption,” delves inside the lives of West Oakland’s poor and homeless recyclers. While California must deal with its urban poverty problem, and rogue recyclers steal from recycling funds, overall the state’s Bottle Bill has significantly reduced waste.
BCnews’ ongoing trek through the political tall grass of double-speak and self-aggrandizement, searching for that elusive nugget / needle-in-the-political haystack, called Truth. Today, Rep. Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee, explains why the government needs to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program that provides food to poor families.
For the last 40 years, Detroiters have fled the once-majestic downtown core for the bucolic image of sprawling suburbia. Now an urban revival in the name of “Detroit Future City,” complete with forests, parks, farms and waterways, is planned to overcome the financial mismanagement and industrial blight that have plagued the city for far too long.