As protests are taking place across our nation in response to the killing of George Floyd, we want to acknowledge the importance of this protest and the Black Lives Matter movement. Here are 15 stories from our writers and our media partners that highlight racial and environmental injustice and are worth reading during this time.
All the city news you can use. By Jeff Wood - Feb 27th, 2021 04:49 pm //end headline wrapper ?>U-Haul truck. Photo by Robert Couse-Baker. (CC BY 2.0)
Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. At the end of the week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.
Cities shrinking because nobody’s moving in: In 2020, the number of people who left cities was not significantly higher than previous years. The number of people moving in, however, did drop almost twice as much as the size of departures according to research from the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank. To fix this, policy should all be in service of targeting the inhabitants who have not yet arrived. (
In shrinking cities, there’s no mass exodus just a lack of new residents. Smart city tech companies and cities have trouble getting along. Meet me for coffee in the parking space out front.
A one-way road out of cities: In 2020, the number of people who left cities was not significantly higher than previous years. The number of people moving in, however, did drop almost twice as much as the size of departures according to research from the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank. To fix this, policies should target those who have not yet arrived. (Henry Grabar | Slate)
Replica and Portland part ways: A Google-linked smart city data platform called Replica and Portland Metro in Oregon parted ways due to disagreements over transparency and shared data. Replica, born out of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, was hailed as a potentially groundbreaking digital tool to track travel demand. The disagreement shows how hard it is for private companies and public agencies to get on the same page when th