Your Neighbors Can Help You Battle Adversity and Disaster

Zócalo's First Book Prize Winner Reflects on the Power of the People Nearby to Ease Both Pandemics and Politics

My book, In the Neighborhood, published 10 years ago this spring, asked how Americans live as neighbors—and what we lose when the people next door are strangers.

These questions are just as timely today. Not only is the country dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also facing a political crisis. And on top of these global and national issues, there are often painful personal matters, such as the sort of health crisis that my own family recently experienced. In each instance, neighborhoods have a critical role to play …

by Peter Lovenheim | May 19, 2020

What Billie Eilish’s Highland Park Neighborhood Tells Us About 21st-Century California

The “Ocean Eyes” Singer Lives in a Wary Place Where You Must Fight to Keep a Home, and Your Soul

by Joe Mathews | January 21, 2020

If Billie Eilish lives in the neighborhood, does that make her one of us?

If you follow the music charts, it might seem preposterous to think of Eilish as the California …

Keeping My L.A. Hood Together, One Baseball Bat at a Time

I've Lived on Lafayette Road My Entire Life and I Want to Keep it Safe

by Chin Thammasaengsri | September 17, 2015

L.A.’s Mid-City area stretches roughly from Crenshaw Boulevard west to Robertson Boulevard and from Pico Boulevard south to the 10 Freeway. In the northeast corner of Mid-City, nestled between three …

Is My Gentrifying L.A. Hood Getting Worse or Better?

A Resident on the Frontline of Urban Change Weighs the Pros and Cons

by Melanie Gonzalez | June 15, 2015

If you want to know what it’s like on the front lines of gentrification, you only have to look at the corner of Avoca Street and Yosemite Drive in Eagle …

A Block Captain Explains How He Keeps His Oakland Neighborhood ‘Suburban Quiet’

It Helps to See Both the Public and the Police as Human Beings

by Abraham Ruelas | April 29, 2015

When one hears the words “police” and “Oakland,” the first things to come to mind are probably the shooting of Oscar Grant by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police …

Sipping Espresso After the Big One

How I’ve Prepared My Family and Neighbors for the Inevitable Disaster

by Jonathan Katz | March 27, 2014

As a native Californian, I’ve always accepted earthquakes as part of life here. So I didn’t use to think about them too much. When the Northridge earthquake hit in 1994, …

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