Andrew Small
Andrew Small is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., and author of the CityLab Daily newsletter (subscribe here). He was previously an editorial fellow at CityLab.
Also: Seattle braces for traffic doom, and hard lessons from Baltimore’s bus redesign.
What We’re Following
Classroom management: More than 30,000 Los Angeles public school teachers have begun a strike in the second-largest public school district in the U.S. The walk-out has highlighted teachers’ demands for smaller classes, more resources, and better pay. But union leaders have argued that the strike is as much about keeping neighborhood public schools open.
With state laws limiting tax hikes and the district leaning more on charter schools, the intersection between school conditions and teacher compensation has put the squeeze on teachers, especially as L.A.’s average rent price rises. “My school has lost teachers almost every year because of lost enrollment to charter schools,” said one high school history teacher. “And also, frankly, because the neighborhood is getting more expensive to live in.” CityLab’s Sarah Holder has the story: The Los Angeles Teachers Strike Isn’t Just About Wages
More on CityLab
Behind the Posters
Over the past year, an exhibition at the London Transport Museum has highlighted unsung contributors to the London Underground’s visual identity: women. Since 1910, at least 170 female artists have been commissioned to make work for London’s public transit network, featured in the museum’s Poster Girls exhibit. Their role in creating the Underground’s instantly recognizable posters is probably no coincidence: The transit system expanded into a citywide network in 1900, around the same time that women first started graduating from British art academies in substantial numbers.
But these creative women also faced dismissive attitudes in the art world that led them to commercial advertising in order to earn a living, where they created instantly recognizable images in near anonymity (and still got paid less than their male counterparts). CityLab contributor Feargus O’Sullivan writes that the posters “reveal a place where female artists were quietly shaping the way the city saw itself, its pleasures, and its future.” On CityLab: The Hidden Women Behind London’s Beloved Modernist Transit Posters
What We’re Reading
Seattle’s Yesler Terrace, the first racially integrated public housing complex in the United States, is getting redeveloped (Next City)
Urgent care centers proliferate in Massachusetts, but fewer low-income patients have access (Boston Globe)
As development eats away at Denver’s green space, the “city within a park” is becoming a concrete metropolis (Denver Post)
Urban sheriffs flee ICE program as small counties join deportation push (Pew Stateline)
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About the Author
