Brazil, afire with urban protests: More than one million join Brazil protests – Americas – Al Jazeera English.
Author: sh
Local journalism: Las Vegas
I’ve been thinking recently about how broadly I conceive the term “urban austerity.” Austerity conjures up not just scarcity, cutbacks, severity, but also the people who are outside that scarcity; the people who impose it, who argue for its necessity and who decide which parts of the city need to be well-funded, shored-up, and which…
What the end looks like
The New York Times is stepping up its coverage of Detroit once again, as the city’s emergency manager issues dire warnings to creditors and seems to be paving the way to bankruptcy. There was a flurry of stories about the possibility of the Detroit Institute of Art perhaps being liquidated to help pay off Detroit’s…
Whole Foods opens in Detroit, threatening stereotypes everywhere | Grist
What is the opposite of urban austerity, or the institution that puts a landscape of abandonment and neglect in stark relief…Whole Foods? Recipient of $5.8 million in public money (I guess when you’re about to go bankrupt, what’s a few million?), opening on the same week as the city’s impending bankruptcy starts to take shape….
In Embattled Detroit, No Talk of Sharing Pain – NYTimes.com
Detroit, currently under the governance of an emergency manager, seems destined for bankruptcy or mass default (it has already begun to default on some of its credit payments. Either scenario will be groundbreaking in municipal finance and in the power relationships between bankers, retirees, cities, and states. The impending battle between people living on fixed…