I met fellow New Orleans transplant, Ellery Burton, 12 years ago, when we were fellow New York transplants, she hailing from Los Angeles. In the city we both attended The New School University; after graduating I stayed in New York and she immediately bee-lined to New Orleans, where she’s been living ever since. Though she’s only been living here for eight years, walking through the Bywater with her makes it seem as though she’s lived here forever. I recently sat down with her at her house in the Lower Ninth Ward to discuss how the city has changed over the past eight years, what makes New Orleans so unique, and what it means to “hustle.”

Americans took a record 10.8 billion transit trips in 2014—the most in 58 years. More cities are realizing the critical role public transportation plays. In addition to getting people from point A to point B, a solid system can make an area the most sought-after neighborhood and attract talent and jobs. As buses and rails rise in popularity, cities’ individual experiences offer lots of lessons, from best practices to cautionary tales about how to build and maintain a great public transportation system. 

Katrina opens with a compelling set piece that encapsulates many of the book’s themes—the chaos after Katrina made landfall, the lack of emergency coordination among local officials, dire situations made worse by crippling issues of race. On August 30, a group of predominantly black residents, seeking to escape flooding and destruction in their neighborhoods, crossed a bridge spanning the Mississippi for the relative safety of suburban Gretna, a predominantly white community. 

The 81 percent is up from 79 percent in an April 2013 survey. The survey also found 15 percent of the homes were demolished and are now empty lots, while 4 percent are only gutted or in a state of derelict. The 2 percent increase in rebuilt homes matches a similar rise of two percent from 2010 to 2013. Among the trends of rebuilding, the survey found a 6 “percent increase from 2009 to 2010 and the 9 percent rise from 2008 to 2009. 

You’re more likely to be raped, robbed or become a theft victim than to become a murder victim in New Orleans, according to crime statistics released last week by the New Orleans Police Department. The NOPD, which is undergoing the implementation of sweeping, federally mandated reforms, said in a news release last week that the “statistics represent a continued downward trend in murder and show that the number of murders in New Orleans is at a historic nearly 30-year low.”​

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, schools are still both separate and unequal. Community and civil rights groups say they’ve identified a key force that’s aggravated the inequity: school closures. On May 14, on the same week the nation recognized the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation ruling, the civil rights group Advancement Project and the national community group network Journey for Justice Alliance filed three federal complaints with the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice.

The complaint against Collegiate Academies, the Charter Management Organization that runs Carver Collegiate, Sci Academy and Carver Prep, represents 20 students, 12 parents, and one teacher.The complaint alleges that the policies and practices violate the students’ right to an education by constantly kicking them out, as well as laws that prevent schools from suspending students without documentation, due process, or properly notifying parents. There are also violations of laws related to students with special needs, the complaint charges.

In 1896, almost a century before Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala caused a stir by daring to show a romance between a black man and an Indian woman in the American South, a Muslim Bengali peddler from Hooghly married a black Catholic woman from New Orleans and settled down in that city. There’s no record of how they met or what the neighbors made of them. Shaik Mohammad Musa died in 1919, a few months before his son was born. His widow Tinnie raised their three children as black and Catholic. Their Indian heritage was lost in history.