A stark contrast in the Shaw neighborhood. Photo by Noah Devereaux.

American University journalism grad students put together a special edition of their online publication, the American Observer, studying the District in flux called “A City Divided.” The edition looks at a D.C. following the mayoral election that many believe showed the biggest divide in the city: between the old-school, perhaps lower income, longer term residents who voted for Vince Gray and the younger, new arrivals with perhaps more progressive, reform-minded ideas who voted for Adrian Fenty.

The feature has a great podcast featuring a roundtable debate with an American University professor of communications, a filmmaker who grew up in SE and did a film about Barry Farm, and a reporter at the Washington Post who covers business development in poorer parts of the city. I highly recommend giving it a listen. The issue also utilizes video and audio well, with plenty of video interviews of area residents that feel they’ve been affected in some way by that G word, gentrification.

The issue spends a lot of time in Columbia Heights, not surprisingly. There were some places that I do feel the writers missed the mark: for starters their front image, a map of D.C. with the ward lines has markers where their stories take place, and they are just inaccurate geographically. Columbia Heights is in Ward 1, yet a lot of the Columbia Heights stories are situated in Ward 2, according to their map. And then there’s the fact that, according to their map U Street lies north of Columbia Heights.

Beyond that, I wondered why the article about being priced out of Columbia Heights talked exclusively to former residents of Mount Pleasant. Yes, the neighborhoods are next to each other, and of course the development in Columbia Heights has affected Mount Pleasant residents and the cost of living in the neighborhood – but surely there were people priced out of Columbia Heights proper they could have spoken to. Maybe I’m nitpicking.

The whole online issue is worth a read: it’s a noble attempt to chronicle a moment of change in our city – from Ward 8 to Ward 3. The issue stays true to the American Observer’s mission: to write from the human angle, with narratives through the eyes of the people being affected.