Another tale of two cities: Why New York’s delivery worker pay standard has worked better than Seattle’s.

Our annual selection of books to bring to the lake, the beach, or the shaded park bench.

It’s time to divorce family support services from New York’s family policing apparatus.

Local officials have far more bargaining power than Big Tech wants them to believe.

They do the work that makes everything else in our economy possible. This is their story.

Why more and more moderate-income New Yorkers are using BNPL to meet everyday expenses.

Many current college-bound students are focused on career-readiness. But there are disquieting jobs trends for recent grads.

A new multi-lingual guide hopes to help families and teachers of students who've experienced the disruptions and stresses of forced migration.

A proposed Federal rule would deny housing assistance to nearly 80,000 families that include people lacking qualifying immigration status.

How closing an ignoble chapter of incarceration history can also environmentally benefit New York City.

Three years after its passage, exactly how New York State's cumulative impacts law will work is still taking shape.

A rent freeze won't improve housing affordability and could worsen living conditions.

Federal budget decisions put lower-income seniors and the Social Security system itself on shakier ground.

Managing homelessness and welfare policy during the second Trump presidency.

It's a global sports event that also needs to think, and act, locally.

Short-term, making Maimonides Medical Center a public hospital is a lifesaver. Long-term, the prognosis is cloudier.

A steadfast advocate for inmates at Rikers Island is becoming New York City's correction commissioner.

Solving housing affordability requires both federal ambition and local policy precision.

Chinatown; Little Italy; Russian Brighton Beach: New York has long had ethnic neighborhoods. But Koreatown is different. Why?

The existing child care system rests on a rickety financial foundation that penalizes its workers. That needs to change, right away.

Cities in both red and blue states face hard times. There's a time-tested, bi-partisan way for Washington to help them.

The new mayor has promised to govern audaciously. Here's an issue that sure fits the bill.

Just how will this new plan shave a promised $1 billion a year off current costs? As usual, the devil may be lurking in the details.

A year-end message from the executive director of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.

The new mayor can get the ball rolling by clearing a waitlist of families eligible for child care.

Featuring the latest wide-ranging writings of New School faculty, staff, and alums.

Often, a new history argues, the costs to New Yorkers of corporate welfare have far exceeded any benefits.

While crucial, new privately built housing is not nearly enough. We also need publicly funded, democratically controlled social housing.

Federal monitoring of community organizations and political protest? We've seen this movie before, and it doesn't end well.

A true measurement of the costs of living shows just how far millions of New Yorkers are from achieving economic security.

A key New York child welfare leader says minor tweaks won't fix systemic flaws.

What the continuing hollowing out of the US Department of Education and the fine print in the Big Beautiful Bill Act mean for current and future college students.

Recriminations and uncertainty continue to plague a reform plan that promised to save money and promote efficiency.

Is limiting the City Council's role in housing policymaking a good idea?

An appreciation of a panoramic history of New York City and its incomparable author.

A decade's worth of Urban Matters maps where we've been and suggests the way forward.

How innovative financing has enabled dramatic improvements to the once-deteriorating Baychester Houses development.

The isolation and alienation so many faced during Covid-19 are all too familiar to families entangled in the child protective system.

Closing opportunity gaps for students matters far more than vague language about inclusion.

Federal officials are abandoning a proven strategy of reducing gun violence. Local leaders need to close the breach.

Presenting a 360-degree view of the anxiety and trauma that accompanies families being torn apart.

More evictions. Greater homelessness. Sidelined affordable housing projects and public housing improvements. That's what to expect from the Congressional budget now approaching approval.

It's summertime, and the reading is meaty.

A crazy-quilt system needlessly sows anxiety and confusion for parents, child care providers, and early childhood education policymakers.

Some arguments for a democratically controlled, publicly chartered bank, established to serve the common good.

The good news: Benefits will go up from disgracefully low levels. The bad news: The system's underlying finances remain insecure and unfair.

Youthful grace, discipline, and self-discovery flourish with professional guidance and community encouragement.

A critical and reliable element of the nation's retirement system is being starved for resources and publicly demeaned.

An effort to rein in Medicaid spending is unintentionally saddling low-wage workers with either inadequate or unaffordable health insurance.

What's the outlook for federal higher education loans and scholarships? Bottom line: there's a lot to worry about.

There's a mysterious, but strong, subterranean connection between nurturing our gardens, and our democracy.

Strengthening grassroots groups that families trust can be the smart and proactive alternative to over-reliance on the child welfare system.

With economic storm clouds brewing, now's the time to repair a badly leaky system.

It's time to get serious about the success of the nation's largest organic waste collection program.

City officials want to use tax breaks to lure out-of-state employers to commercial buildings struggling with vacancies.

We take a hard look at Governor Hochul's proposed inflation refund credit.

Composting enriches the soil and enriches young lives, too.

First-hand recollections from the men and women who faced uncertainty and danger so that the rest of us might live.

Despite a legal right to counsel, over a third of New York City tenants appearing in housing court still don't have lawyers.

Life in one Rikers Island facility can seem like a citywide shoplifters' convention.

Emphasizing single-family zoning and protecting tenants' rights can get in the way of increasing the supply of housing.

A little more housing in every neighborhood is a start but only a start.

The motto: Care, custody, and control. Translation: I don't care, you're in custody, I'm in control.

Overwhelmed by news accounts of social division and distrust? A new book highlights individual disrupters creating an alternative narrative.

A year-end message from the executive director of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.

A Decameron of New York's Covid lockdown, and other tales of our time.

Titles that capture the moral, philosophical, and political challenges we face.

Welcome to the latest battle in New York's long, losing Medicaid wars.

It's long past time for a fuller public dialogue about the fair allocation of hospital resources across the city and state.

The long pandemic economic slump is behind us but income inequality is growing, too.

Five years after a landmark local law passed, private waste haulers still put up troubling safety numbers.

Voters face choices about how power is exercised that were framed via a rushed and shambolic process.

If a bustling working-class neighborhood is described as empty, is that a prelude to gentrification and displacement?

Bureaucratic hurdles notwithstanding, thousands of older newcomer students are determined to continue their disrupted educations.

A Supreme Court decision permitting penalties for sleeping and camping outdoors leads to legal confusion, hostility, and the potential for heightened human misery.

How Williamsburg's shopping district transformed as the neighborhood went upscale.

A veteran policymaker argues that reproductive freedom is only one of the key issues for women, nationally and locally.

The personal is political: Looking at decisions about reproductive choice, 50-plus years ago, and today.

Can New Yorkers' resilience and diversity counter a post-pandemic rise in poverty and inequality?

A new look at the roots of Brooklyn's Black communities shows why the past is never dead.

How did the college aid process run amok this year? Let us count the ways.

The nation's largest public school system is undertaking a massive makeover in literacy instruction.

More than 18 percent of Newark older teens and young adults aren't in school or working. That's roughly double the rate for New Jersey as a whole.

A picnic basketful of hot new titles from The New School community.

Asylum-seeking families still face a thicket of obstacles trying to get their kids into New York City schools. It doesn't have to be that hard.

Living in a homeless shelter was depressing and isolating; finding secure housing and caring relationships turned her life around.

In the Ironbound community, the homes of some 50,000 people border, and are interspersed with, industrial sites.

New York – reclassified a “humid sub-tropical” city – slogged through five “five-year storms” in 2023.

Working a minimum-wage job shouldn’t disqualify you from receiving discounted transit fares.

The state’s rate of on-the-job injuries is far higher than the nation’s – and it’s climbing fast.

It’s called “the city game.” And starting in the mid-1970s, it was a hard knocks life for the Knicks and for New York City.

Adding new housing stabilizes rents and reduces homelessness.

An exploration of the nation’s “billion-dollar problem” with standardized testing.

Emergency Covid relief funds eased pressure on families and child care providers. That’s not an option anymore. Now what?

The maximum benefit to workers hasn’t been changed since 1989. It’s $170 a week.

Necessary change also necessarily requires some painful realizations.

If rents covered only basic maintenance costs – and generated zero profits – they’d still be unaffordable for impoverished New Yorkers.

New York City’s housing market is getting tighter – and new construction alone won’t solve the affordability crunch.

Cut health insurance spending by 10 percent without imposing premiums or reducing benefits? Good luck with that.