Siobhan McDonough, Writer
I wrote this in collaboration with the other members of my HCA team, Ellie Vorhaben and Eliana Fram. Read the rest on CPR’s website. A Harris Community Action team, in coordination with the Chicago non-profit Equiticity, found evidence that implementing an open streets program similar to Bogota’s ciclovía could effectively encourage social integration, build healthy habits, and boost local businesses. Harris…
Linking from the Chicago Policy Review. The idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained traction over the past decade. While the idea of a basic income has existed since the American and French Revolutions, it has never been implemented on a country-wide level. Myriad questions remain on its execution: should it replace most or…
About three years ago, I published Why should you care about global poverty? I deeply care about global poverty, and I am glad many Americans agree. Since then, I’ve learned that the world is a more complex and terrible place than I’d previously thought. Outside of traditional foreign aid, there are plenty of ways the…
I twice read Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi this December, and in the last few pages – I won’t spoil it – in the last few pages, I was suddenly in Chicago in winter seeing the trees spangled with lights, and remembering a different life, one in which I wandered around ancient monuments each weekend. It was…
The thing that strikes me about Chicago is how clean it is, and empty. I sometimes wonder if it’s because of the pandemic, but when I came here in January it was like this, too: cold and shiny with wide streets. I was downtown during Thanksgiving in the late afternoon, when all the shops were…
When I moved to Delhi, I bought a beautiful, hardwood bed, with spring mattresses. My roommate asked why I had done such a thing, and I said that it was because I was planning to stay. I wanted to stay for years. We went to the furniture market in Munirka after dark. Every front shop…
The ease and relative low cost of public transit in Delhi was one of my top five favourite things about living there. This is partially was because I’m an American used to expensive and broken public transit, but I’ve also lived in Europe, and Delhi public transit is better than that too (I’ve never been…
I am in awe of Delhi’s monuments. I was always aware if the privilege I had of living there, that for the change in my pocket you can get on the metro (itself amazing) and end up at buildings from every century of the last thousand years. Delhi reminds me of the ocean. When you…
This post was originally published at littlethings07. Every city contains many cities. They run parallel to each other, divided by education, or ethnicity, or religion, or preferences. You can live in a city your whole life without seeing many of its sides. I lived in Lusaka for only a year and a half. I was…
I went to Shimla in the beginning of December to work. Early December is the best time of year to go; the days and nights are like chilly New England autumn and the town is filled with the whispers of snow. There isn’t very much to do in Shimla, if you’re looking for things to do. The capital…