Thanksgiving News Roundup

Well done, Joshua Poe, for identifying our last sidewalk challenge as a beautiful-if-slightly-overgrown brick sidewalk along North 25th Street looking north from Montgomery Street in Portland. Up above is the latest in our sidewalk challenge series. Tell us where it is in the comments below.

And now on with the top urbanism news of the week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Humans Are Becoming City-Dwelling “Metro Sapiens”. To achieve sustainability, the human species needs to embrace its urban side, argues public health researcher Jason Vargo. Smithsonian

The Three Generations of Black Mayors in America by Pete Saunders. Urban Side Yard author, Pete Saunders, steps in for Aaron Renn and pens a piece about the challenges and successes of three generations of black mayors in America. Urbanophile

Scenes From a Ferguson Protest in New York City. New Yorkers are excellent at bringing up substantive questions around public space and the right to the city. Here they embody those questions as they take to the street in the wake of the decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the killing of 18 year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. CITYLAB

Police killings, demonstrations, and emergency management. Risk management due to civil unrest is one of the most lucrative (and problematic) new forms of urbanist work. Here Richard Laymen explores what events like those this week in Ferguson, New York, and Chicago mean for urban planning, and design. Urban Places and Spaces

Could A Simple Repair Have Prevented Yet Another Tragic Police Killing? How can our urban environment (and the changes we make to it) influence social issues? Alexis Stephens takes a look here. Next City

(Not So) Fun Maps: Heat Map of NYC’s Hidden Slums and Illegal Apartments. While Michelle Young completely breezes past the point of MoMA’s new show, Uneven Development, this project—which maps the necessary ‘informal’ housing of many New York residents in response to the lack of affordable units available in the city—is part of an important conversation around thinking through new solutions to the current housing crisis. Untapped Cities

The Indiana Toll Road and the Dark Side of Privately Financed Highways. Who is Macquarie, and why did it pay so much to run this Indiana highway? What can we learn about private finance in the infrastructure industry by taking a closer look at how Macquarie handled the Indiana Toll Road? A three part series by Angie Schmitt and Payton Chung. StreetsBlogUSA

Why whites don’t understand black segregation. Dan Keating provides a comprehensive analysis of one of the top problems facing urbanists in the coming years. Can we have an end to segregation without forced integration? The Washington Post

# POLITICS /// FEAR AS GOVERNMENT: THE INSURGENT ZOMBIES ARE BACK. Why does the Center for Disease Control and Convention have a “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic?”  The Funambulist provides, as always, an interesting perspective. The Funambulist

Experiments in Mapping the Intangible. Hans Ulrich Obrist rounds up a set of maps created by artists and thinkers that chart what is often hard to visualize. The editor labels them “alternative cartographies.” boingboing