Even “The Girl From Ipanema” Can’t Save Rio’s Olympic Train

Why the Faltering Subway Line Exemplifies Brazil's Broken Promises

When the self-proclaimed greatest legacy infrastructure project of the Rio Olympics is a new metro line that stops eight miles short of the actual Olympic Park, you already know there’s a problem.

Yet there was the city’s mayor, the state’s governor, the national legislature’s leader, and the country’s interim president all at the metro’s inauguration—a half-year late, way over budget, and only a week before the opening ceremony for the 2016 Games.

Michel Temer, the interim president standing in while elected president Dilma Rousseff faces impeachment, had flown in just …

By Stephen Kurczy | August 4, 2016

South L.A. Doesn’t Need Saving

Instead, the Area Could Be a Savior to a California That’s Pushing out Its Working Class

By Joe Mathews | July 7, 2016

“How can we save South Los Angeles?” is a tired question. It’s an artifact of previous decades when the region formerly called South Central was known by its reputation for …

What’s Holding Jordan Downs Back?

The Housing Project’s Much Anticipated Redevelopment Keeps Getting Delayed by Bureaucracy, Funding, and Nasty Underground Surprises

By Daniel Ross | July 7, 2016

This is the year the transformation of Jordan Downs, a sprawling housing project in the heart of Watts, finally begins. So, where’s the fanfare? The story is a long one, …

Rent Control Is a Kludge, Not an Answer, for Affordable Housing

California Embraces Complex Formulas to Dodge the Hard Work of Actually Fixing a Problem

By Joe Mathews | March 31, 2016

Rent control won’t solve California’s enormous housing problems. But that’s not stopping many Californians from pursuing rent control policies in their hometowns.

2016 threatens to become the Year of Rent Control, …

The Campaign to Save India’s Tigers Ignores the Human Cost of Conservation

Saving South Asia’s Regal Cats Has Plunged Thousands of Women Into Poverty and Ignominy

By Lisa Margonelli | March 30, 2016

Tigers are for most of us a hypothetical necessity.

Hypothetical in the sense that very few of us spend any time around tigers outside of zoos, though we interact with …

Will Online Courses Make Education a Human Right?

The Overwhelming Majority of Today's MOOC Students Are Western, White, and Well-Off. Recent Experiments Suggest How That Could Change.

By Marianne Krasny and Bryce DuBois | February 23, 2016

Just the first word in the name—massive open online course—poses the question. Just how big can MOOCs be?

MOOCs combine filmed lectures, readings, course material, and online interactions among professors and …

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