The death of Malaysia Goodson on a Manhattan subway station this past Monday has rattled New Yorkers and ignited an important debate about accessibility in the New York transit system. Without an elevator at that station, Goodson had to take her child's stroller down the stairs where she fell, tumbled down the subway stairs, and died. While officials are still investigating whether Goodson suffered a prior medical condition or she was killed by the impact of the fall, the tragedy has nonetheless highlighted major accessibility issues. Of the 472 stations, only 25% have elevators and each elevator breaks down 53 times a year on average. An active lawsuit against the Manhattan Transit Authority, joined by the Justice Department, asserts that the agency is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and claims that the subway system is one of the "least accessible in the country." Activist Christine Serdienian Yearwood says: "Everybody who has been a parent or a caregiver knows that this is a problem. I've had a lot of people write and say 'This could have been me.'"

T he brutalist architecture of New Belgrade, a neighborhood of Belgrade, is attracting international tourists and visitors, writes Guy de Launey at the BBC. A recent six month exhibit of socialist Yugoslav architecture at the New York Museum of Modern Art exemplifies a new interest in the brutalist school that has made New Belgrade "a mecca for connoisseurs of raw concrete." But, while the concrete buildings are attracting "positive international attention," many of them are in disrepair. Co-founder of Belgrade International Architecture Week Danica Jovovic Proadnovic laments the bad maintenance: "The quality of New Belgrade's urban design and social housing was much better than nowadays. It's very important for us to recognize the value of that heritage - it hasn't been valued enough, and we need to preserve it."