热点大瓜

From Harlem to Havana: The Nehanda Isoke Abiodun Story

The book chronicles the life of Nehanda Isoke Abiodun, born Cheri Laverne Dalton, to show how the rise of the Metropolitan Knowledge City affected Black urban communities and fueled the radical left movement. It examines how socioeconomic decline and state repression combined to radicalize Dalton, transforming her into a revolutionary Black woman forced into exile by the U.S. government. The book argues that changes in the urban landscape placed Black neighborhoods at the center of the freedom movement and shifted the struggle’s focus from civil rights to local self-determination. In Harlem and New York City, the heroin epidemic shaped this urban reality.

The book’s central claim is that the government’s failure to address urban challenges—especially its refusal to solve the heroin crisis while targeting radicals who confronted it—fueled the rise of radical Black resistance. From Harlem to Havana uses a racial capitalism framework to examine how urban development shaped Black neighborhood life and culture, and it explores the complex, multiracial radical movement that emerged to resist Black oppression. The book concludes with Nehanda’s life in Cuba, showing how her revolutionary nationalism influenced the Cuban hip-hop scene and made her an internationally known figure.    

Transforming the Upper Broadway-Fillmore Neighborhood:  A Needs Assessment and SWOT Analysis

The UB Center for Urban Studies is developing a people-centered model of neighborhood development based on seven interconnected principles: solidarity, inclusion and belonging, cooperative homeownership, communal ownership of land and property, regulation of market forces, cooperative economics, and community wealth building. A pilot project will test and refine this model in practice. The first step is a needs assessment and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis to inform a visioning and neighborhood planning process. This process will provide a deep understanding of the neighborhood and its challenges, guiding both the visioning—meant to unify residents around a shared future—and the neighborhood planning, which will construct a roadmap to that future.

Racial Capitalism, Metropolitan City-Building and Residential Development

This research project examines how racial capitalism shapes metropolitan city-building and residential development. It focuses on how city-building transformed the racial hierarchy into a neighborhood hierarchy, transforming Black neighborhoods into underdeveloped spaces. The study analyzes six cities—Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Philadelphia—to test the hypothesis that the for-profit model of neighborhood development reproduces racial hierarchy in the form of neighborhood stratification.

Transformative Neighborhood Planning Under Racial Capitalism

While the literature on transformative, insurgent, and progressive planning is growing, little is known about neighborhood planning and development processes that can transform underdeveloped communities into healthy, thriving, and joyful places for current residents. This paper outlines the theoretical framework guiding the UB Center for Urban Studies’ neighborhood development model being used to transform the Upper Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.

Trump 2.0: Neo-Imperialism and the New Age of Empire

This study examines the political and ideological forces driving Donald Trump’s presidency. Our hypothesis is that the world has entered a new phase of global development, with the U.S.—aligned with Russia and China—pushing for a new world order rooted in neoimperialism and a resurgence of empire. Central to this realignment is the transformation of the U.S. into an authoritarian White Nationalist state. White Nationalism—masked by rhetoric of colorblindness—is the ideological tool used to suppress democratic liberalism, leftist movements, and progressive or revolutionary nationalism among Black people and people of color. This shift is international in scope, marked by the U.S. consolidating around radical White Nationalism. We are in a new era. The past is gone. There is only the future we shape. Trump officials have labeled their Western Hemisphere policy “Monroe Doctrine 2.0”—a modern revival of 19th-century U.S. dominance in the Americas.

The University and the Development of Democratic Societies

The UB Center collaborates with the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships and other organizations to strengthen the role of anchor institutions—universities, hospitals, public schools, and community foundations—in neighborhood development and transformation. It is also affiliated with the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility, and Democracy. The goal is to position colleges and research universities as progressive agents of change committed to social justice and the transformation of underdeveloped neighborhoods into healthy, thriving, and joyful communities. Within this network of anchors, the university must serve as a hub for producing knowledge that drives social change. The task of developing engaged universities has moved to a new level in the United States. Higher education is under attack by the Trump Administration. Trump knows that an autocratic society cannot be established with an engaged university system in place. Hence, in his first wave of attacks to destroy democracy, Trump has targeted the university.