The idea here isn’t to actually protect each grain of rice, or salmon, or squirrel, as if it’s a human being.

The most obvious change would be to the local area — it would be a blow to the continued use of the Line 3 pipeline, which has been operational since October of last year.

by writing it into the law, you’re saying that you think nature’s personhood is just as valid as, say, tax law.

t might sound unusual, but we’ve used conceptual versions of what a person is in law for quite some time — corporations, schools and law firms, for example, are all technically allowed to enter into contracts as if they were singular human beings.

But can wild rice sue a state agency? The short answer is: yes. This is the story about what might happen if rice wins.

“Colors are cultural creations and they’re kind of shifting all the time, sort of like tectonic plates. Color is not a precise thing. It’s changing, it’s living, it’s constantly being redefined and argued over and that’s part of the magic of it!”

The color blue became associated with Mary and rose in prominence.

It was only with the rise of Christianity and the cult of the Virgin Mary that blue became fashionable in the West.

This green pigment was derived from a compound copper arsenite which is incredibly toxic — and  that a piece of Scheele’s green wallpaper that was only a few inches long had enough arsenic to kill two adults.

political turmoil in the Mediterranean where it was manufactured

When squeezed or prodded, this gland produces a single drop of clear garlic-smelling liquid that when exposed to sunlight, turns from green to blue, and then finally to a dark reddish purple.

eams that wore red during matches statistically did better than they should have

By some estimates, one-quarter of all power outages are squirrel-related.

No one stopped to wonder if there could be such a thing as too many squirrels, which might have been a mistake.

People would hunt birds of prey because they were considered “mean.” Meanwhile, other animals like pigeons and squirrels were considered peaceful.

at least: certain kinds of animals.

the idea of populating them with squirrels traveled, too.

you could walk through a place like Boston or Philadelphia or Manhattan and you would not see a single squirrel

grey squirrels are so much a part of the urban fabric that for a long time, it never occurred to anyone to study urban squirrels at all

Internal Sass features have also moved into the module system, so we have complete control over the global namespace.

But the general process of neighbor-hood change entails a loss of urban cohesiveness and the growth of a new pluralism among residents that will compel congregations to reexamine their identities and play new roles

The rapid-fire changes that can reconfigure neighborhoods during gen-trification (whether from rezoning laws or the closing of long-established retail outlets) makes transitions between niches both a problem and a pos-sibility for congregations

Mainline congregations seem best able to bridge the gap between old-timers and a segment of newcomers; their openness to the neighborhood and their liberal positions on women in leadership, gay rights, and other social issues seem a natural fit with new residents

he evangelical lifestyle enclave’s demand that members hold to a common belief system lends itself to the formation of social networks of like-minded believers who define themselves against an unbelieving society

the stress on intimacy, authenticity, and community that strikes a powerful chord among young urban newcomers arriving on the current wave of gentrification

The thirty congregations are compared according to nine analytic dimensions: (1) primary identification, (2) neighborhood attachment, (3) membership compo-sition, (4) neighborhood investment, (5) neighborhood activism, (6) prospects for growth, (7) tenure, (8) member proximity and commutation to congrega-tion, and (9) sources of funding and other resources

All of these congregations have sought (some more self-consciously than oth-ers) to find their own niche in the religious ecology of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Following the model of social ecology, these neighborhoods have experienced long-term organizational mortality and adaptations and, most noticeably, the birth of congregations

Such a growth in the number of nontraditional families is partly tied to the young age of the newcomers–the median age of the new arrivals between 1990 and 2000 was thirty-five. The study found that older Italian, Hispanic, and Polish communities were in danger of being displaced.

Far more than belonging to the same neighborhood, congregations tend to attract those of particular age groups or generations as well as those with similar beliefs and worship styles, even eclipsing the importance of denomination (i.e., it is more important to have a born-again experience than to be Methodist, Baptist, etc.)

This chapter looks at how congregations meet the needs of both newcomers and longtime residents in a period of drastic neighborhood change

Most social scientists who study gentrification tend to see religious groups and particularly congregations as largely marginal and passive by-standers in the larger structural processes of neighborhood change

Yet Ley and Martin admit that while conventional congregations may suf-fer losses and even shut their doors, alternative spiritual groups

David Ley and R. Bruce Martin (1993) argue not only that the creative class moving into gentrified zones is secular to begin with, but also that the establishments (such as restaurants and entertainment venues) they bring into neighborhoods force congregations out of these areas.

This raises the question of not only how congregations adapt but also how they influence these gentrified zones and their residents.

In many cases, new residents coming into a neighborhood through gen-trification are viewed as potential members with identifiable needs that a con-gregation can meet, as well as talents that a congregation can use.

This brief encounter between the puzzled hipster and the Roman Catho-lic participants in the procession of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Williams-burg, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2008 illuminates the ongoing cultural disconnect between newcomers and old-time residents in this gentrifying neighborhood.

For this report, an initial test determined a tract was eligible to gentrify if its median household income and median home value were both in the bottom 40th percentile of all tracts within a metro area at the beginning of the decade. To assess gentrification, growth rates were computed for eligible tracts’ inflation-adjusted median home values and percentage of adults with bachelors’ degrees.

The District is home to some of the county’s fastest-gentrifying communities.

Neighborhoods gentrifying since 2000 recorded population increases and became whiter, with the share of non-Hispanic white residents increasing an average of 4.3 percentage points. Meanwhile, lower-income neighborhoods that failed to gentrify experienced slight population losses and saw the concentration of minorities increase

In the District of Columbia, for example, 54 neighborhoods were found to have gentrified since 2000. Back in the 1990s, just five neighborhoods had gentrified in a decade when the city was dubbed the nation’s “murder capital.” 

Portland, OR 58.1% 36 26 80 142 Washington, DC 51.9% 54 50 75 179 Minneapolis, MN 50.6% 39 38 39 116

Compared to lower-income areas that failed to gentrify, gentrifying Census tracts recorded increases in the non-Hispanic white population and declines in the poverty rate.

Gentrification greatly accelerated in several cities. Nearly 20 percent of neighborhoods with lower incomes and home values have experienced gentrification since 2000, compared to only 9 percent during the 1990s.

Gentrification still remains rare nationally, with only 8 percent of all neighborhoods reviewed experiencing gentrification since the 2000 Census.

Early efforts to renovate the rowhouses raised concerns of displacement among poor black renters. In a 1972 Washington Post article, rowhouse tenants in the 1800 block of Eighth Street NW predicted their eventual replacement by wealthier whites, a forecast that became reality in a few short decades

Mostly, renewal efforts resulted in construction of a few high-rise federally subsidized low-income apartments sponsored by church groups

The 1968 riots gave birth to Shaw in a previously unnamed neighborhood of 1910-era rowhouses. There were African-American churches, and small businesses concentrated along U Street

The neighborhood “reminded us of the meatpacking district of New York,” said Kai Reynolds, a JBG partner. In their search for what he calls “authentic,” they also visited the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles and the Pearl District of Portland, Ore.

Cosby didn't want the movement to become institutional and frozen by inertia

After decades of bringing white, middle- and upper-class people into neighborhoods around Columbia Road and Adams Morgan to serve the poor and lecturing to seminarians and faith leaders, Cosby has concluded that societal change might go in the other direction.

"We've got to move from believing so deeply to doing," he preached. "We've got to keep in mind the discrepancy between belief and embodiment."

“routine burden of citizenship”

The effect of these types of residency requirements is often to exclude people who do not live in a given neighborhood from that neighborhood.

Documents produced during trial

Washington, D.C.,128

buses, subways, and light rail—in larger metropolitan areas, low-income people and people of color often rely more heavily on public transportation than people from other groups.1

local governments have the power to prohibit these barriers

a public housing project in Hollander Ridge

Eight Mile Wall

difficult for pedestrians to cross streets or for cars to turn

Public education and engagement could also serve to bring more awareness to the fact that the built environment often excludes. This Article seeks to serve that end by offering examples of architectural exclusion with the hope that citizens,

architectural decisions are enduring and hard to change.

cation of highways and transit stops, and even residential parking permit requirements can shape the demographics of a city and isolate a neighborhood from those surrounding it, often intentionally.

A simultaneous transformation in modes of human interaction with waterand social attitudes towards the body found its logical endpoint in the modern bathroom:a private space that marks a clear manifestation of indirect social control of the type

They are also venues where people forge collective identitiesand extend their solidarities beyond their immediate familiar circles toinclude also the unknown, the strangers.

But forthose (such as the unemployed, housewives, and broadly the “informalpeople”) who lack such institutional power/settings, streets become acrucial arena to express discontent.