How Public Is Your Favorite Public Park?

From New York’s High Line to Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, Wealthy Foundations Are Making Lovely Spaces That Lead to Less Equal Cities

Who owns your favorite park?

That might seem like a strange question. Many people assume that “we”—the public, the people—do. But from New York’s High Line to Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, parks in U.S. cities are increasingly managed, financed, and policed by private groups that have little accountability to the public. Just as many other services once seen as public goods—such as healthcare, schools, and water utilities—have increasingly become the property of corporations and wealthy financiers, public space, too, has been privatized.

Historians locate the origins of urban park privatization in 1970s …

The Struggle for a Latino Place in Chicago

Like Their Black Neighbors, Mexican Americans Fought for Decades to Access Restricted Housing and Urban Space

In June of 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference headed north to Chicago to lead the Chicago Freedom Movement in a series of marches …

Where I Go: Hunting Queer Ghosts in Chicago | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Where I Go: Hunting Queer Ghosts in Chicago

Why Being Gay and Being Haunted Go Together in Fundamental Ways

We think the ghosts will come to us as we sit in Kaitlyn’s car, once our car, on top of the man-made hill that houses the only mausoleum in Woodlawn …

Preparing Dinosaurs Author Caitlin Donahue Wylie | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Preparing Dinosaurs Author Caitlin Donahue Wylie

Cretaceous Herbivores Are Overlooked in Their Awesomeness

Caitlin Donahue Wylie is a social scientist at University of Virginia and author of Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work Behind the Scenes. Ahead of her visit to Zócalo for an event titled …

The Anticipatory Grief of Living Through a Pandemic | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Anticipatory Grief of Living Through a Pandemic

The Great Believers, a Novel of the AIDS Crisis, Reminds Us That ‘We Are the Memory-Keepers of This Moment’

To be a survivor of wars, of diseases, of earth-shattering moments is to be an inheritor. You inherit the grief that comes with loss; but you also inherit the memories, …