The Good, Bad, and Ugly Public Transit Seat Covers of the World

An international roundup of bus, train, and subway seat designs based on CityLab’s rules for a commuter-friendly textile. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The Dangerous Persistence of ‘Broken Windows’ Policing

In defiance of the principles of "broken windows policing," most serious urban violence is concentrated among a small network of people—less than 1 percent of a city’s population. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Navigator: What Is ‘Home’?

Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Mexico’s ‘Mayan Train’ Is Bound for Controversy

The Mayan Train would link cities and tourist sites with rural areas and environmentally sensitive rainforests. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: ‘Arrest Me,’ Says Pittsburgh’s Mayor

Also: Americans distrust the 2020 Census, and the Amazon pushback is also about immigrants. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Because of Louisiana, the Minimum Wage in New Orleans Is a Poverty Wage

Around the World Day of Social Justice, we should consider why cities pay poverty wages, and why 28 states can preempt local efforts to raise the minimum wage. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Why Pueblo, Colorado, Has Its First Mayor in 60-Plus Years

“Signing off on a $79 credit-card bill—I think that can be done at a different level than the mayor. But until we can get things in order, that’s how it goes.” | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The State of Census 2020 Is Distrust

Across political persuasions, a majority of Americans are convinced that adding a citizen question will render the 2020 count inaccurate. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Why the Amazon Pushback Is Also About Immigrants

In the wake of the HQ2 cancellation in Queens, Amazon’s connections to federal immigration enforcement are drawing scrutiny and criticism. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Inside Pittsburgh's Battle Over Gun Control Laws

Pittsburgh could be the bellwether city in Pennsylvania, defying state law to pass gun control ordinances, but first it has to get past its own district attorney. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Why Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto Won’t Back Down on Gun Control

“It would be to the benefit of the people who live in urban areas to have 50 gun control lawsuits at the same time”—Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: Workers and Jobs Are Too Far Apart

Also: The case against the Obama Presidential Center, and Berlin’s ideas for a housing revolution. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Where Women Startup Founders Are Gaining Ground

The share of VC "first financings" going to women-founded startups tripled between 2005 and 2017, to 21 percent. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Why the Case Against the Obama Presidential Center Is So Important

A judge has ruled that a lawsuit brought by Chicago preservationists can proceed, dealing a blow to the former president’s plans to build his center in Jackson Park. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

When Workers and Jobs Are Too Far Apart

In costly cities like San Francisco, open positions far exceed nearby job-seekers. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Berlin Builds an Arsenal of Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

Berliners are proposing some radical ideas to overhaul the housing market, and many have broad public support. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Why Suburban Swing Voters Are Less Common Than You Think

A new poll finds that far from being more moderate than urban or rural voters, suburbanites are actually more partisan. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: The Blurring of America’s Urban Neighborhoods

Also: The curious politics of a mega-mall, and a red-state YIMBY bill. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

New Oil Drilling Could Be Coming to the Everglades

Environmentalists and officials are concerned about contamination of drinking water and other harmful impacts. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The Curious Politics of a Montreal Mega-Mall

The car-dependent suburb it’ll be built in wants to greenlight Royalmount against the city government’s wishes but it needs them to pay for the public infrastructure. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

A Red-State Take on a YIMBY Housing Bill

How do you sell pro-housing zoning reform in conservative Utah? | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Urban Neighborhoods, Once Distinct by Race and Class, Are Blurring

Yet affluent white neighborhoods and high-poverty black ones are outliers. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: Queens’ Housing After Amazon

Also: The car loan trap, and a visual history of the public library. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

A History of the American Public Library

A visual exploration of how a critical piece of social infrastructure came to be. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

There’s a Tile Theft Epidemic in Lisbon

It has long been a problem, but the recent booms in tourism and real estate are furthering the destruction of Lisbon’s tile heritage. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Cape Town Is Food-Rich, so Why Are Some Residents Food Insecure?

Some chefs are trying to ensure more city residents share the food plenty. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Without Amazon HQ2, What Happens to Housing in Queens?

The arrival of HQ2 was set to shake up the borough’s real estate market, driving up rents and spurring displacement. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Subprime Auto Loans Are Turning Car Ownership Into a Trap

For low-income buyers, new predatory lending techniques may make it easier to get behind the wheel, and harder to escape a debt trap. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: The Wall’s Eminent Domain Problem

Also: Unpacking New York’s ejection of Amazon, and a short history of Germany’s beloved Schwebebahn. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The Town Where Retirees Can’t Retire

Welcome to Alcona County, Michigan, where retirees are staying on the job to plow the roads, fight fires, and keep the town running. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Lawmakers Aim to Protect Private Landowners on U.S.-Mexico Border

Members of Congress hope to pass laws to help border-adjacent property owners who may be displaced through eminent domain if Trump’s border wall plans proceed. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

With Trains Like Schwebebahn, No Wonder Germans Love Public Transit

The Schwebebahn, Wuppertal's Prussian-era train has a unique design: Its wheels sit atop the singular rail, and the trains hang below it, connected by supports that look like the Iron Giant’s knuckles. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Capturing Black Bottom, a Detroit Neighborhood Lost to Urban Renewal

Soon after the photos were taken between 1940 and 1950, the city started to tear down Black Bottom, a 20-year process that would scatter its residents, most of them working class renters, but many with deep, multi-generational ties to the area. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

A Valentine’s Day Tradition, Born in the Heart of Boston

In the 1800s, candy helped make Boston an industrial powerhouse. Candy hearts have been a lasting legacy of that era, though their future is less certain. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Are Reparations Baltimore’s Fix for Redlining, Investment Deprivation?

One of Baltimore’s foremost urban scholars, Lawrence Brown, says the solutions to the city’s inequitable financing problems need to be as radical as the policies that segregated Baltimore in the first place. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Amazon’s HQ2 Fiasco Will Cost the Company More Than It Costs New York

The mega-company has bucked dealing reasonably with New York City, Seattle, and any community that asks them to pay for its freight. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

New York’s Ejection of Amazon Is the Start of a Movement

Some New York lawmakers are celebrating their victory in driving Amazon out of new York. And they have plans to thwart the next bidding war. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: Amazon Pulls HQ2 From New York City

Also: The cities with the most singles, and the opioid crisis’s rural-urban divide. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

There’s a Rural-Urban Divide in the Opiate Crisis

"The factors that put people in communities at higher risk are are not spatially random.” | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The Swinging Singles Bar That Changed Toronto’s Nightlife

The 300-seat Coal Bin opened in January 1970, the same year Ontario dropped its strict rules around men and women drinking together in pubs. The following year, the drinking age was reduced to 18. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Aboard Jerusalem’s Light Rail, a Divided City Rides Together

Part cultural tour, part social activism, a project called Dissolving Boundaries uses Jerusalem's public transportation as a stage for examining the city’s stark divisions. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The Cities With the Most Singles

Some metros have more single men than women, or the reverse. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

CityLab Daily: California’s High-Speed Rail Careens Off Track

Also: The company shaping American police policy, and Boston City Hall at 50. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Where California High-Speed Rail Careened Off Track

It might bring economic development, but scaling back the state's planned link between San Francisco and Los Angeles does a disservice to California's transportation needs. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

We Found Love in the Gig Economy

These couples found love in the gig economy. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

Tate Modern Visitors Can Keep Looking Into Rich People’s Condos, Legally

Because of the Tate Modern’s viewing platform, some Neo Bankside residents complain that images of them in their own homes have turned up on Instagram. Some are so upset that they have come close to avoiding their apartments altogether. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

San Francisco Is for Lovers. Washington, D.C., Not So Much.

If you like long walks on the beach and swoon over unrequited love, you probably won't like dating in Washington, D.C. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago

The Problem With a ‘Smart’ Border Wall

To resolve Trump’s impasse, many lawmakers have proposed boosting surveillance technology to create a virtual barrier. | Continue reading


@citylab.com | 5 years ago