#urbanpoverty

[africashowboy]

Mother and child nap in front of an office in Accra. Many girls migrate from Ghana's poorer northern regions to seek greener pastures in the richer south and unfortunately a lot of them fall victim to sexual exploitation and physical abuse; sometimes ending in unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Photo and Words by Nana Kofi Acquah (www.nkaphoto.com) @africashowboy (Copyright: 2017). #africa #accra #ghana #kayayo #kayayei #poverty #urbanpoverty #sonya7rii #sonyalpha #2470gm

[my-asianewstoday-blog]

Government proposes creation of special ministry to deal with urban poverty http://dlvr.it/TQcXcD

[sayakita]

In Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, urban poor queue up nightly for their food. They deserve better.

[daveblume]

Craig Everlasting

I was coming in from the West and there was an hour of sunlight left, but he appeared as a grimy, and in a word, forlorn, silhouette. As I pulled over and fixed my mask in place, I was pretty sure it was Craig, and sure enough when our eyes met his lit up with a flicker of welcome recognition. We hadn't met up for a few months and I had started to wonder if he was gone. Still bent over in a permanent hunch, his hands were jet black, he didn't seem all too healthy. Ras-fucking-putin, that is Craig White. When I asked him if he had (or needed) a mask, he indicated he had one, but never did get around to putting one on during our ten minute sidewalk chat. He was panhandling next to a broken-down bicycle on the Roscoe offramp. I laid a five on him, and I told him (as he was watching my smile closely even behind the mask) I had had an intuition I would find him today after all these weeks, so I taken a new route south to Roscoe and my old boyhood paper route neighborhood. He called it a premonition... I asked about Gracie, who I had seen puttering around on this same corner a few weeks earlier but wasn’t able stop, he said she was staying nearby, just as he is. Covid, he brushed off as it applied to himself. "Gracie had it!" he exclaimed, then quickly added "they cured her of it." We talked about his bike, which needs tubes, so that became my assignment, for tomorrow....

There’s a ton of video on the One of Us website, he has been a friend, ally and confidante since we started meeting over four years ago... the video clip below is from August 2019, when Craig was ailing with MRSA...

[deeeeeelle]

http://inhabitat.com/oxfam-posts-seven-photos-of-what-seven-families-eat-in-a-week/ian-kerr-with-his-family-and-a-weeka%C2%80%C2%99s-food-supplied-by-a-charity-foodbank/ http://www.migrant-rights.org/our-networks/ http://www.fastcocreate.com/3045964/this-experiment-shows-what-happens-to-your-body-when-everything-you-eat-is-organic

[americanplutocrats]

Why Economic Inequality Should Not Be Seen As An Urban Issue

Political writers and the politicians they cover tend to conflate economic inequality and urban poverty. That confusion suits the purposes of politicians, since both sides use urban poverty as a wedge issue with the core constituents. But the issue of economic inequality cuts across political and physical boundaries and the political party that figures out how to speak to that issue will be the one that dominates American politics over the next decade. A single working mom in urban south Chicago faces some of the same economic challenges as a shift manager at an A&W in Birmingham, Alabama. Wages that don’t pay the bills, lack of upward mobility and an unclear future for their kids. But the argument for commonality goes against the instincts of many politicians who worry that expanding the definition of “economic equality” will somehow alienate their party’s loyal voters. The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent has an interesting piece today on urban poverty and how voter demographics make it increasingly easy for Republican House members to ignore the issues of urban poverty:

Republicans probably need to win Florida and Ohio to win the presidency, and those, along with other states they will set their sights on, such as Wisconsin, Virginia and Pennsylvania, all have major urban centers. Wasserman notes that the debate over urban policy might actually end up mattering more in terms of the battle for suburban voters — rather than urban dwellers — in these states.

Republicans are “competing for suburban voters around places like Richmond and Milwaukee,” Wasserman says. “They don’t need to prove they are activists. They just need to prove to moderate suburbanites that they care.”

But in a twist, the GOP strategy for tightening the party’s grip on the House — the party’s bulwark against national demographic change — could end up acting as an obstacle to developing urban policies that might accomplish that. “Republicans have dis-incentivized their participation in addressing these issues because they have stuffed heavily Democratic, heavily minority precincts into urban seats,” Wasserman says. That’s a very valid point if the issue remains urban poverty instead of the larger issue of economic inequality. Yes, the riots in Baltimore were driven by some factors that are very specific to a poor, urban minority neighborhood. But there also some arguments to be made that speak to the larger issues that would resonate with the general pool of American voters. It’s a more nuanced approach, but one that has a great deal of upside.

[sufi420]

Hong Kong's tryst with super high density urbanism continues even after the destruction of Kowloon Walled City, as captured by Michael Wolf in his new book "Hong Kong Architecure : the aesthetics of density"

[sufi420]

until it was demolished in 1992, hongkong's Chinese enclave and home to hong kong's criminal underbelly, Kowloon Walled City was the most densely populated human habitat in the world.