The Wonderful, Painful Opera of Cleveland

From Idylls to Industrial Wastelands and Back, the City’s Stark Contrasts Will Come Into Focus at This Year’s Republican National Convention

Inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park, through a deep secondary growth forest, a narrow trail skirts the infamous Cuyahoga River following the historic route of the Ohio & Erie Canal. This is the same path used by mule drivers to tow canal boats loaded with goods and passengers when the state of Ohio was a sparsely settled wilderness. The Hopewell and Ojibwa and Seneca made their homes here until 1805, when treaties stripped them of their ancestral lands and forced them out of the area.

Today the valley is a 51-square-mile nature …

By Kevin P. Keating | July 15, 2016

The South Los Angeles Future Will Be Shared

In a Stronghold of African Americans and Immigrant Integration, New Identities Emerge Rooted in a Sense of Place as Much as Race

By Manuel Pastor | July 7, 2016

The typical story of neighborhood change, often called ethnic succession, is one in which an incoming ethnic group “takes over” and wipes away the past. But that does not capture …

Why I Long for El Swapmeet de la Alameda

The South L.A. Market Once Connected My Family to Mexico; Now It's a Memory of the City We Fled

By Miguel Molina | July 7, 2016

I miss el Swapmeet de la Alameda, on East 45th Street where South Los Angeles meets the city of Vernon.

I miss how the smell of churros—cinnamon, brown sugar, and baked …

In the 1990s, Los Angeles Was Both Heaven and Hell

Recalling a Decade of Disasters, Political Mobilization, and Great Art

By Sarah Rothbard | April 29, 2016

The L.A. Riots. The Northridge Earthquake. The AIDS crisis. Proposition 187. Fires. Mudslides. White flight. Recession and joblessness. The departure of the aerospace industry. The departures of the Rams and …

How California Got Broken to Pieces

The State’s Problem Is Not Big Government, but Too Many Small and Stupid Governments

By Joe Mathews | March 24, 2016

Wherever you live in California, your county probably doesn’t fit you.

In mountainous and rural areas, your county may be too small to do the big things you need; 24 of …

How Riding the Rails Can Change Cities and Lives

Don’t Judge L.A.’s New Train Lines by the Number of Cars They Take Off the Road. Their Potential to Nurture New Communities Is Incalculable.

By Joe Mathews | March 3, 2016

What will the railroad bring us?

That was the question Henry George sought to answer for California in his famous 1868 essay, “What the Railroad Will Bring Us,” on the eve …

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