City Infrastructure Project

For the last several decades, malls across the country have been closing one after another, leaving behind not only abandoned buildings, but also renewed interest in what malls mean to people, why they are disappearing in the first place and what can be done to save them (or if they should be saved at all). Toledo, Ohio, for example, remains enamored with the memory of its long-gone shopping complexes and what they meant for a thriving, mid-sized, Midwestern city. Cover graphic by Jessie Walton for Midstory.

As we see Toledo’s downtown changing in the midst of its revitalization efforts over the last few years, take a look, street by street, at the Toledo of 100 years ago—brick roads bustling with pedestrians, ornate architecture and all.

The pandemic has halted progress for public transit systems nationwide, but Amtrak’s Director of Government Affairs for the Midwest discusses why the region was struggling with passenger rail long before COVID-19 and how we might move forward.

Read Part I, "Public Health, Transit and Investment," here. COVID-19 has decimated public transportation in cities nationwide; the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA)...

From airlines to subways, mass transit is particularly ill-suited to the social distancing practices that help stem COVID-19’s spread, so it doesn’t come as a shock that the transportation sector has struggled to navigate the pandemic. And for transit systems nationwide, it’s a bitter pill to swallow: where public transportation was most successful, it now seems most threatening—and threatened.

If you made it past the front page of The Blade in mid-May, 2000, you might have spotted a curious advertisement. Among concerts, hair...