In 1959 New York City announced a "slum clearance plan" by Robert Moses that would displace 2,400 working class and immigrant families, and dozens of businesses, from the Cooper Square section of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Guided by the belief that urban renewal should benefit - not displace - residents, Frances Goldin and her neighbors formed the Cooper Square Committee and launched a campaign to save the neighborhood. Over five decades they fought politicians, developers, white flight, government abandonment, blight, violence, arson, drugs, and gentrification - cyclical forces that have destroyed so many working class neighborhoods across the US. Through tenacious organizing and hundreds of community meetings, they not only held their ground but also developed a vision of community control. Fifty three years later, they established the state's first community land trust - a diverse, permanently affordable neighborhood in the heart of the "real estate capital of the world."
Kathy's family left on a Saturday morning in 1965. The rumble of bulldozers echoed through the neigh...

On the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes thr...

Author and activist Jane Jacobs talks about the problems and virtues of North American cities.

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the partic...

A biography documentary of the Argentine modernist architect Amancio Williams.
A short film about the changing face of London Soho and the implications of gentrification on Mimi, ...

A taxi drives through the city of Berlin. Its driver is a punk, left and a well-known figure in the ...

The human side of town planning, as exemplified in Baltimore, Maryland. The Coldspring Project conce...

Filmed over four years, this documentary focuses on the impacts of gentrification as gay white profe...

In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its jou...

A short documentary shot in November 2021 in Berkeley. It reflects on the ethos of privatization in ...

Over the course of over six decades, Honest Ed's became a Toronto Landmark. The neighbourhood it lef...

Amina, Sami and Jennyfer are high school students in the Paris suburbs, in 93. At the initiative of...

In the 1950s, Seattle had plans to build one of the densest networks of freeways in the world. It wo...

In this documentary, Marie-Claire Rubinstein reveals to us, through the testimonies of the inhabitan...

San Francisco has long enjoyed a reputation as the counterculture capital of America, attracting boh...

Facing eviction the oldest black-owned gay bar in Brooklyn relies on a passionate community in its f...

“El apagón: Aquí vive gente” is a 23-minute film that explores the socio-economic challenges in Pue...
Architect Stanley King involves the local Vancouver community in urban design.