Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Gentrification in Buffalo

May 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
buffalo-new-york

Portland is dying. Buffalo is gentrifying. We live in interesting times: "This is much more though a forced migration that is coming and I think that is the tone that has really upset the neighborhood," said Ricardo Herrera, executive director of the Buffalo Federation of Neighborhood Centers. The Rust Belt is full of Detroits. The Sun Belt is full of Houstons. What is wrong with the Rust Belt? What is right with the Sun Belt? That's about the extent of our policy geography. The scale of analysis is too coarse. Mesofacts muddle the picture. I advocate for pulling apart the Rust Belt, ... Read More

More like this: Burgh Diaspora
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Will Bike-Sharing Programs Kill More People?

May 9, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Later this National Bike Month, Citi Bike will debut in New York City. The ambitious bike-sharing program will launch with 6,000 three-speeders spread across 300 docking stations, numbers that will grow to 10,000 and 600, respectively, when the plan is fully operational. Fittingly, the biggest city in the United States will boast the country's largest bike-sharing program. A 2008 study predicted between 1.4 million and four million tourists will use the system. The fight between cars, bikes, and, to a lesser extent, pedestrian rights is a never-ending source of contention in Gotham—popping ... Read More

More like this: Health
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Third Coast Diaspora

May 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
chicago-skyline

A great city is a magnet that pulls in talent from everywhere. On that score, New York has no equal. Studying Pittsburgh, a great city exports talent. Steeler fans are ubiquitous, obnoxiously so. On that score, New York has no equal. America's greatest cities suffer from chronic brain drain. Case and point, Chicago: Thomas Dyja: That’s very much part of the story of the book. Chicago at that point is a nexus for the country. It’s a place that everyone has to go through. A lot of its importance comes from that. It’s a place where people could go and start over. Certainly, Chicago also ... Read More

More like this: Burgh Diaspora
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Hot Investing Tip: Get Your Money Out of Cupcakes Immediately

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
cupcakes

Sometimes, things just make sense. Like when a handheld cake that masquerades around like it's actually some kind of viable breakfast option for any person with even a remote notion of "personal health" finally gets found out. That's what appears to be happening with the gourmet cupcake company Crumbs, according to the Wall Street Journal: After trading at more than $13 a share in mid-2011, Crumbs has sunk to $1.70. It dropped 34 percent last Friday, in the wake of Crumbs saying that sales for the full year would be down by 22 percent from earlier projections, and the stock slipped further ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Watch America Become Obese and Engulfed by the Ocean

April 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
hot-dog-beach

If we don't do anything, we will all be overweight and floating in water, pecked at by seagulls who've leveraged the new conditions to wrestle control of most major American cities from our decaying, decrepit species—or at least that's the takeaway from two things on the Internet today. Over at The Atlantic, James Hamblin put together this graphic of the country's obesity rates as they progressed—maybe regressed is the better word?—from 1990 to 2010. As you can see in the key, the darker-blue and then redder things get, the more obese an area has become. So, plummeting health! But ... Read More

More like this: Science
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Dark Tourism Has Its Fans

September 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Just two days after the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks themselves, writer Michael Luongo's piece, “Ground Zero as Dark Tourist Site,” was honored with a gold medal in the Cultural Tourism category as part of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers. Said the judges: On the edge of darkness is where Luongo masterfully informs us of what is rising from the ashes of our memories. He takes us to the Tribute WTC Visitor Center and offers glimpses into the National September 11 Memorial and Museum scheduled to open in 2012. How ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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9/11 Memorial: Ground Zero as Dark Tourist Site

September 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

New York's ground zero, where the World Trade Center's Twin Towers once stood, is a place of what was and what will be. Ten years after terrorists flew planes into the buildings, the memories of what had been are fading into the dust of time and new construction. Chaos mixes with normality, pilings are driven into the ground, steel clatters as new structures rise. Bicyclists whiz past briefcase-toting commuters, both groups oblivious to curious onlookers straining to see through slits in the construction fences. These are the ground zero pilgrims, numbering daily in the thousands, many ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Magazine Feature Story, September-October 2011
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Define a ‘Great’ City

March 22, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

H.V. Savitch knows that "Best of" lists are always debatable. That's why he didn't make one. Instead, the distinguished research professor at the University of Louisville took a less-traveled road. He analyzed other authoritative sources to glean information on an endlessly debated topic: What's the "greatest" American city? Sure, it's a frivolous question. And it begs to be countered with a simple, "Define 'great.'" But it's also a question dear to the hearts of nearly every glossy travel magazine, cultural watch-dog and, apparently, AOL or MSNBC blogger. Iconic cities, after all, seem ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, Findings
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