How is Climate Change Affecting New England?
Climate change is here, all around us, affecting the four seasons that define New England’s identity and the activities we anticipate as the weather changes throughout the year: fall foliage and leaf-peeping. Quiet walks in the woods. Skiing down slopes of fresh powder. Swimming in beautiful lakes and at ocean beaches. Jogging along the Esplanade. Downing a dozen oysters at the end of a summer afternoon.
‘Anti-Displacement Tool’ to Direct City Funding to Projects that Won’t Price Out Residents
The City of Louisville will soon begin using a newly developed algorithmic tool that aims to stop city funding from going to housing projects that would displace local residents. The tool was mandated by a tenant-led 2023 law and, after a year of development by researchers at Boston University, was approved for use in November 2024. Now, it’s ready to be deployed on upcoming development proposals.
Can Louisville’s New ‘Anti-Displacement Tool’ Redirect City Funds Toward Affordable Housing?
The City of Louisville, Kentucky, will soon begin using a newly-developed algorithmic tool that aims to stop city funding from going to housing projects that would displace local residents. The tool was mandated by a tenant-led 2023 law and, after a year of development by researchers at Boston University, was approved for use in November 2024. Now, it’s ready to be deployed on upcoming development proposals.
Art on the Underground: A Public Contradiction
Rudy Loewe’s commission at Brixton Underground Station is a case in point. Launching in November 2025, this work will form part of the now well established Brixton Mural Programme by seeking to build upon the area’s diverse narratives by highlighting the ways people gather together in this urban environment. The ‘bold, flat colours’ that characterise Loewe’s aesthetic will undoubtedly chime with Brixton’s own multicultural offering – providing Brixton’s community an opportunity to recognise, and even reclaim, their lived experiences in dialogue with the art. Certainly this is what Claudette Johnson’s current (2024) Brixton commission, Three Women, has sought to achieve.
What do local housing advocates and experts think of Josh Kraft’s housing plan?
About a week after announcing his run for Boston mayor, Josh Kraft gave details on Feb. 12 about his vision for housing development in the city. The average price for rental units in Boston has increased exponentially since 2021, with the price of a one-bedroom apartment costing $2,667 per month in June 2024, according to data from Boston Pads. Additionally, rental inventory and vacancy rates have been very low in 2024 compared to figures in 2020 and 2021.
BU’s Initiative on Cities Builds a Tool for Fighting Displacement
Activist Jessica Bellamy owns the house where she grew up, in the historically Black neighborhood of Smoketown near downtown Louisville, Ky. Around 2020, she says, she began planning a modest renovation, but none of the local contractors wanted the job because they were all booking more profitable projects in the neighborhood. Smoketown was under strong gentrification pressure that would soon spread to other historically Black neighborhoods nearby.
COM Set to Open New Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact
The science is undeniable: Earth’s climate is changing and communities around the world are already suffering the impacts. But, rather than catalyzing action, environmental storytelling often struggles to overcome an erosion of trust in the media and a landscape rife with misinformation and disinformation. That complicated media environment hinders progress on crises ranging from gun violence to pandemic responses.
In Boston, map of opportunity for first-time homebuying has changed
Three years later, after more price increases and shrinking inventory, she is hailing a new source of help for first-time buyers, including many being priced out of Boston: the “One+ Mortgage” program announced on Nov. 26 by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP). The shift had been gradual, and now it was more formalized: the map of homebuying opportunity had changed.
Dani’s Queer Bar Seeks to Renew Boston’s LGBTQ+ Nightlife Scene
For Boston, Dani’s arrival (it opened in September) is huge—yes, nearly every neighborhood, from Fenway to Brighton to Seaport to Chinatown, has a place to eat and drink and dance (if you’re lucky), but how many of those specifically cater to Boston’s flourishing LGBTQ+ population? Almost none. To me, that makes Dani’s Queer Bar, the newest addition to the city’s queer nightlife scene, feel like a beacon.
A new tool helps avoid displacing vulnerable residents
In the wake of the justice movement for Breonna Taylor – who police shot and killed in March 2020 – an activist and a newly elected Louisville Metro Council member decided it was time to protect the city’s Historically Black Neighborhoods. Four years later – on Nov. 21, 2024 — the Louisville Metro Council unanimously passed the Anti-Displacement Ordinance. The law enabled the creation of the Anti-Displacement Assessment Tool, the first grassroots-conceived, legislatively driven public dashboard to measure and limit the risk of displacement in areas where publicly funded residential developments are proposed.