From local politics to placemaking, from community development to guerrilla urbanism, Next City is revisiting some of our top articles at the intersection of urban policy, arts and culture.

As artists, cultural strategists and community advocates find innovative ways to reclaim their spaces, tell their histories and fight for equity, we’re putting their efforts center stage. These stories highlight how arts and cultural initiatives can help reshape the fabric of our cities and drive social change.

Alongside editor’s favorites, we’ve included the most-read stories of the year. All of these articles showcase Next City’s mission to deliver solutions journalism that explores how to build more equitable cities.

For more, see our most popular stories across the board for 2024. Or check out our annual Solutions of the Year magazine, an 80-page print edition highlighting 2024’s 24 best ideas for making liberating cities from systems of oppression.

With its dense population of working-class Black, Puerto Rican and Jewish communities, the South Bronx was once home to a unique hyper-local music and performance arts culture. But all 24 of the South Bronx music venues were shuttered, abandoned or burned during decades of fires, says Bobby Sanabria.

“Today, people all over the world have two images of the Bronx, hip-hop culture … and the fires,” says Sanabria, the Bronx Music Heritage Center’s co-artistic director. With the Oct. 18 opening of the Bronx Music Hall, the borough is getting its first independently-owned cultural venue in over 50 years. The performance venue and cultural center anchors the new Bronx Commons, which offers 305 affordable studio units and apartments. — Marielle Argueza, October 2024

At the beginning of 2024, 13.7% of office space sat empty, while 7.6% of multifamily buildings, 4% of retail spaces and 5.6% of industrial spaces were vacant.

As cities scramble to find creative new uses for these spaces, from climbing gyms to small-scale manufacturing to vertical farms, one organization in Florida has a stop-gap answer: Use the empty space for affordable artist studios. Since launching in June 2019, Zero Empty Spaces has placed more than 600 artists in 10 commercial buildings in 10 cities. — Cinnamon Janzer, July 2024

Trust the process. A decade ago, the Philadelphia 76ers adopted this mantra as a shorthand for the professional basketball franchise’s multi-year strategy to build a championship-winning team.

The story of deep-pocketed developers versus working-class communities is nothing new in Philly’s Chinatown, which has won and lost these battles before. But the Sixers’ adopted mantra sets up a perfect clapback that encapsulates how it’s always been about more than just the outcome — arena or no arena. It’s about the desire for Philadelphia, and all cities, to break away from their deference to deep pockets when determining the direction of development.

“We will not let developers continue to dictate the process of how we live,” says Mel Hairston, an organizer from West Philly. “Your process has failed. The people are done with your damn process.” — Oscar Perry Abello, September 2024

Week after week, Richmond’s City Council chambers have been flooded with anti-war protesters carrying “Ceasefire now!” signs and holding up hands covered in blood-red paint. Since the new year, attendees have often arrived three hours early to ensure a spot.

With more than 30,000 Palestinians dead, more than 100 municipalities – including San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Detroit and other major cities — have formally declared their support for an end to Israel’s siege, often following dramatic showdowns and disruptions in their city council chambers.

Yet as these intense debates increasingly dominate city council chambers across the country, Richmond and other cities across the country have begun implementing new restrictions to their public comment procedures. — Barry Greene Jr., March 2024

When it launched a first-in-the-nation anti-displacement fund in 2016, Seattle established itself as a leader in racial equity. The City’s Equitable Development Initiative finances the construction of community cultural and commercial space developed by community-of-color organizations in Seattle, often co-located with affordable housing. As of March 2024, the fund provided over $100 million for 56 community-led projects.

But a new attack on the EDI threatens that progress. And racial equity funds in other cities that use progressive tax revenue to address systemic racism and inequality have faced similar attacks. – Quynh Pham, Ryan Curren and Ben Palmquist, July 2024

A courtyard at Harlem’s Polo Grounds Towers, home to roughly 4,000 residents, was once characterized by several dilapidated wooden benches with remnants of red paint from years ago.

Now, after a four-month community design process to engage residents, the courtyard has been transformed into Sprout, a playscape created by and for the residents of the public housing development. — Cinnamon Janzer, October 2024

In November, Darrell Owens tweeted a photo of his 64-year-old neighbor sitting on the curb at a bus stop to draw attention to the lack of seating for bus riders.

“Which stop?” replied Mingwei Samuel. A month later, he had placed a wooden bench, built based on a template from the Public Bench Project, at the bus stop in downtown Berkeley. The response was immediate. On Dec. 17, he installed the bench; by Dec. 28, Berkeley had removed the bench and replaced it with an official metal one. After that first bench, Samuel and Owens teamed up to build and place even more benches. – Maylin Tu, January 2024

Today, 50 years after the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam, visitors to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C., are likely to witness a phenomenon they cannot expect to see anywhere else in the country: public grief. The wall transforms statistics into people, and people into stories. It makes grief possible, expressible and shareable.

Every 18 months, as many Americans are killed on roads and streets as were killed in the decade of the American war in Vietnam. No end is in sight, and we have no good reason even to anticipate a steady decline. Yet until now, no national monument has ever begun to unite the names and portraits of the people torn away from us too soon, or of those who have endured grave injuries. — Peter Norton, October 2024

According to the National Register for Historic Places criteria for listing, “historic places either retain integrity (that is, convey their significance) or they do not.” We leave ourselves no middle ground.

This focus on a subjective, yet rigid definition of the material aspects of integrity turns historic places from things that are venerated for the stories they can tell into things that are precious. This culture of preciousness elevates historic material as the deciding factor for what gets saved and what does not. – Bonnie McDonald, January 2024

Nearly 60 years after the formal end of federal redlining and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Black and Latinx households in New Jersey’s Essex County are half as likely to own a home than white households and three times more likely to live in poverty than white residents.

After years of failed reparations bills, a self-organized group of advocates and experts is well underway on a plan to study the harms of slavery and racial segregation in the former “slave state of the North.” – Kimberly Izar for Next City and the Jersey Bee, August 2024

It will take a village to build a new future for Chicago’s South Side. And building that village is going to take a few decades. But the Black-led church behind the fledgling Imani Village is playing the long game.

Anchored in the city’s Pullman neighborhood, Imani Village is a social enterprise owned and operated by the nearby Trinity United Church of Christ. Within the next five years, Imani Village plans to transform 32 acres of land into than 80 affordable single-family homes and 70 units of senior housing alongside an academic and educational center, a community space, an organic community garden, an agricultural center, a sports and wellness center, a retail center, a community health clinic, a boutique hotel, and more. — Cinnamon Janzer, April 2024