title: Sustainability

text: The relationship between the environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability is a debated topic. The concept of weak sustainability assumes that natural capital (or environmental resources) can be substituted with "capital made by humans". An example is the technological progress that has solved many environmental problems, such as using environmental technologies to reduce pollution. The concept of strong sustainability, on the other hand, states that nature (or natural capital) provides functions that cannot be replaced by technology. Thus, strong sustainability acknowledges the need to preserve ecological integrity. It emphasizes that many resources and ecosystem services cannot be recovered or repaired within a reasonable timescale once lost. Examples include loss of biodiversity, pollination, fertile soils, assimilation capacity, clean air, clean water, and climate regulation.


title: Sustainability

text: Robert Ayres, a physicist and economist, has pointed out that, in practice, economic decisions are taken at very narrow social scales, such as for the interests of individuals, family groups, or firms, and not with regards to future generations and planetary welfare.


title: Sustainability

text: The economic dimension relies on the environmental dimension in many aspects. Accordingly, weak sustainability has been criticized as "popular among governments, and business, but profoundly wrong and not even weak, as there is no alternative to preserving the earth's ecological integrity". This statement underlines the central importance of the environmental dimension of sustainability.


title: Sustainability

text: For example, in 2020 the World Economic Forum stated that: "Our research shows that $44 trillion of economic value generation – more than half of the world's total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and is therefore exposed to nature loss." Three large economic sectors are highly dependent on nature: construction, agriculture, and food and beverages. Drivers of nature loss include: land use change, sea use change, climate change, natural resource use and exploitation, pollution, and invasive alien species.


title: Sustainability

text: The notion of trade-offs between different dimensions, for example between environmental management and economic growth, is frequently discussed. Balancing the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability is difficult; environmental and social costs are not generally paid by the entity that creates them, and are not expressed in the market price. Usually, these costs are either not addressed or are left to be resolved by government policy. Trade-offs between environmental management and economic growth lead to disagreement about the relative importance of each. This may include discussions of the relative importance of the three dimensions or objectives. The language involved frequently invokes the need to integrate, balance, and reconcile the dimensions without necessarily articulating what this means in practice.


title: Sustainability

text: The physical limits of Earth and its ecosystems mean that the "aspirations for universal human well-being embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals" cannot be supported under current trends.


title: Sustainability

text: How the preservation of ecological integrity (i.e. environmental sustainability) relates to other (social, economic) demands creates a moral dilemma. This dilemma is inevitable and can only be resolved by prioritizing or compromising ecological integrity.


title: Sustainability

text: Methods to measure or describe humans' impacts on the Earth include the ecological footprint, ecological debt, carrying capacity, and sustainable yield.


title: Sustainability

text: The concept of planetary boundaries emphasizes that there are absolute thresholds of the carrying capacity of the planet which must not be crossed in order to prevent irreversible harmful changes to the Earth system. Components with expected planetary boundaries include: climate change, biodiversity loss (changed in 2015 to "change in biosphere integrity"), biogeochemical (nitrogen and phosphorus), ocean acidification, land use, freshwater, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosols, chemical pollution (changed in 2015 to "introduction of novel entities").


title: Sustainability

text: The "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment" from 2005 measured 24 ecosystem services and concluded that only four have shown improvement over the last 50 years, while 15 are in serious decline and five are in a precarious condition.


title: Sustainability

text: The field of environmental economics has proposed different methods for calculating the cost (or price) associated with the use of public natural resources. The damage to ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity were calculated in The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project from 2007 to 2011.


title: Sustainability

text: Sustainability economics means taking a long-term view of human welfare. One way of doing this is by considering the social discount rate. This is the rate by which future costs and benefits should be discounted when making decisions. The more one is concerned about future generations, the lower the social discount rate should be. Another method is to quantify the services that ecosystems provide to humankind and put an economic value on them, so that environmental damage may be assessed against perceived short-term welfare benefits. For example, it has been calculated that "for every dollar spent on ecosystem restoration, between three and 75 dollars of economic benefits from ecosystem goods and services can be expected".


title: Sustainability

text: In recent years, the concept of doughnut economics has been developed by the British economist Kate Raworth to integrate social and environmental sustainability into economic thinking. The social dimension is here portrayed as a minimum standard to which a society should aspire, whereas an outer limit is imposed by the carrying capacity of the planet.


title: Sustainability

text: The political goal of sustainability, as formulated in the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" (the 17 Sustainable Development Goals), is very comprehensive and ambitious. The declaration stated that "In these Goals and targets, we are setting out a supremely ambitious and transformational vision" and have called the SDGs to be "of unprecedented scope and significance". Due to the high complexity of this goal, there are many reasons why sustainability is so difficult to achieve. Such reasons are also called sustainability barriers. These barriers need to be analyzed and understood. Only then can they be addressed effectively so that a sustainability transition becomes possible.


title: Sustainability

text: Some sustainability barriers have their origins in nature and its complexity ("everything is related"). Others are rooted in the human condition: the value-action gap, for instance, relates to the fact that we often do not act according to our convictions. These barriers have been called intrinsic to the concept of sustainability as such.


title: Sustainability

text: Other barriers are extrinsic to the concept of sustainability. This means they could in principle be overcome, for example by putting a price tag on the consumption of public goods. A number of extrinsic sustainability barriers are related to the dominant institutional frameworks where market mechanisms often fail for public goods. Also, legal frameworks rarely consider issues of intergenerational justice and future generations. Existing societies, economies, and cultures incite consumption expansion. Therefore, the structural imperative for growth in competitive market economies inhibits necessary societal change.


title: Sustainability

text: Furthermore, there are several barriers related to the difficulties of implementing sustainability policies. There are trade-offs to be made between objectives of environmental policies (such as nature conservation) and economic development (such as poverty reduction). There are also trade-offs between short-term profit and long-term viability. Political pressures generally favor the short term over the long term and thus constitute a barrier to actions oriented toward improving sustainability.


title: Sustainability

text: Barriers working against sustainability can also be due to the Zeitgeist, such as consumerism and short-termism.


title: Sustainability

text: A sustainability transition is a structural and potentially radical transformation to a more sustainable society. The European Environment Agency defines a "sustainability transition" as, "a fundamental and wide-ranging transformation of a socio-technical system towards a transition more sustainable configuration that helps alleviate persistent problems such as climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss or resource scarcities." The concept of sustainability transitions is a similar to the concept of energy transitions.


title: Sustainability

text: A sustainability transition must be "supported by a new kind of culture, a new kind of collaboration, a new kind of leadership". It requires substantial investment in "new and greener capital goods, while simultaneously shifting capital away from unsustainable systems". It also requires actively demoting unsustainable options.


title: Sustainability

text: To achieve a sustainability transition, societies would have to change their fundamental values and organizing principles. These new values would emphasize "the quality of life and material sufficiency, human solidarity and global equity, and affinity with nature and environmental sustainability". Any transition towards sustainability can only be effective if far-reaching lifestyle changes complement technological advancements.


title: Sustainability

text: Scientists have pointed out that: "Sustainability transitions come about in diverse ways, and all require civil-society pressure and evidence-based advocacy, political leadership, and a solid understanding of policy instruments, markets, and other drivers."


title: Sustainability

text: Four overlapping processes of transformation have been identified: they are either led by technology, markets, government, or citizens. They each have different political dynamics.


title: Sustainability

text: The IPAT formula, which was developed in the 1970s, states that the environmental impact of humans is proportional to human population, affluence and technology. Therefore, to decrease environmental impact and to increase sustainability, routes such as human population control, reducing consumption and affluence (e.g. reducing energy consumption), and developing innovative or green technologies (e.g. renewable energy) would all be beneficial. In other words, the broad aim would be to have fewer consumers and less environmental footprint per consumer or person.


title: Sustainability

text: There are four types of action principles that people and decision-makers can follow to facilitate more sustainable societies:


title: Sustainability

text: Some example steps humanity can take in three areas to transition to (environmental) sustainability include (as per the update to the 1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity): In the area of reduced consumption: reducing food waste, promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods. In the area of reducing the number of consumers: further reducing fertility rates and thus population growth; and in the area of technology and nature conservation: maintaining nature's ecosystem services, promoting new green technologies and adopting renewable energy sources while phasing out subsidies to energy production through fossil fuels.


title: Sustainability

text: In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly announced in the Agenda 2030 for the Sustainable Development Goals: "We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world on to a sustainable and resilient path." The 17 goals and targets lay out some of the transformative steps. For example, with regard to the future of the planet Earth, the UN's pledge is to "protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations."


title: Sustainability

text: In order to resolve the dilemma of economic growth versus environmental conservation, the concept of eco-economic decoupling has been proposed. The idea would be to decouple environmental bads from economic goods as a path towards sustainability. This would mean "using less resources per unit of economic output and reducing the environmental impact of any resources that are used or economic activities that are undertaken" Pressure on the environment can be measured by the intensity of pollutants emitted. Decoupling can then be measured by following changes in the emission intensity associated with economic output. Examples of absolute long-term decoupling are rare, but some industrialized countries have decoupled GDP growth from both production and, to a lesser extent, consumption-based emissions. But even in this example decoupling alone is not sufficient and needs to be complemented by "sufficiency-oriented strategies and strict enforcement of absolute reduction targets".


title: Sustainability

text: A 2020 meta-analysis of 180 scientific studies found that there is "no evidence of the kind of decoupling needed for ecological sustainability" and that "in the absence of robust evidence, the goal of decoupling rests partly on faith". The possibilities for decoupling and thus the feasibility of green growth have been questioned. Decoupling on its own will not sufficiently reduce environmental pressures, but needs to go with addressing the issue of economic growth. Adequate decoupling is currently not taking place due to rising energy expenditure, rebound effects, problem shifting, the underestimated impact of services, the limited potential of recycling, insufficient and inappropriate technological change, and cost-shifting.


title: Sustainability

text: The decoupling of economic growth from environmental deterioration is difficult because environmental and social costs are not generally paid by the entity that causes them, and are therefore not expressed in the market price. In other words, the causal entities (businesses, etc.) tend to be free riders regarding environmental goods. For example, the cost of packaging is factored into the price of a product, but the cost of disposing of that packaging is not. In economics, such factors are considered externalities, in this case a negative externality. Companies do not have an incentive to reduce packaging or to choose recyclable materials because they are not required to pay for disposal. Usually, externalities are either not covered at all or left to be addressed by government action or by local governance.


title: Sustainability

text: The Sustainable Development Goals adopted some conservative and unambitious perspectives on the tensions between economic growth and environmental sustainability. This is evident, for example, in their emphasis on longstanding but dubious claims about decoupling and resource efficiency as technological solutions to the environmental crisis.


title: Sustainability

text: Some examples of potential incorporation of environmental and social costs and benefits into economic activities include: taxing the activity (the polluter pays); subsidizing activities that have a positive environmental or social effect (rewarding stewardship); and outlawing particular levels of damaging practices (legal limits on pollution).


title: Sustainability

text: Without government action, natural resources are often over-exploited and destroyed in the long-term. A textbook on natural resources and environmental economics stated in 2011: "Nobody who has seriously studied the issues believes that the economy's relationship to the natural environment can be left entirely to market forces."


title: Sustainability

text: Related to this aspect, Elinor Ostrom (winner of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) stated that the choice should not be limited to either the market or the national government, and that local governance (or self-governance) can in fact be a suitable third option. Her empirical work involved field studies on how people in small, local communities manage shared natural resources. She showed that, over time, communities using natural resources such as pastures, fishing waters, and forests can establish rules for use and maintenance that can lead to both economic and ecological sustainability. An important requirement for the success of self-governance is to have groups in which participants are frequently communicating. In this case, groups can manage the usage of common goods without overexploitation. Based on Ostrom's work, it has been pointed out that: "Common-pool resources today are overcultivated because the different agents do not know each other and cannot directly communicate with one another."


title: Sustainability

text: Questions of global concern are difficult to tackle because global issues would require global solutions. But the existing global organizations (UN, WTO and others) are not sufficiently equipped. They have hardly any sanctioning mechanisms to enforce existing global regulation. Furthermore, they are not always accepted by all nations (an example is the International Criminal Court), their agendas are not aligned (for example UNEP, UNDP and WTO), or they are being accused of nepotism and mismanagement. There are also challenges that multilateral international agreements, treaties and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) face and which result in barriers to sustainability: There is a dependence on voluntary commitments (for example Nationally Determined Contributions for climate action), existing national or international regulation not being effectively enforced, and there are regulatory white spaces and control deficits for international actors (including multi-national enterprises). Lastly, many international public organizations (such as WTO, IMF, World Bank, UNFCCC, G7, G8, OECD) are lacking perceived legitimacy and democracy.


title: Sustainability

text: Sustainable business practices integrate ecological concerns with social and economic ones. One accounting framework for this approach is called the triple bottom line which uses the phrase "people, planet, and profit". The circular economy is a related concept in sustainability with the ultimate goal of decoupling environmental pressure from economic growth.


title: Sustainability

text: Growing attention towards sustainability has led to the formation of many organizations such as the Sustainability Consortium of the Society for Organizational Learning, the Sustainable Business Institute, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Supply chain sustainability refers to companies' efforts to consider the environmental and human impacts of their products' journey through the supply chain, from raw materials sourcing to production, storage, and delivery and every transportation link in between.


title: Sustainability

text: Religious leaders have stressed the importance of caring for nature and environmental sustainability. In 2015 over 150 leaders from various faiths issued a joint statement to the UN Climate Summit in Paris 2015. They reiterated a statement made in the Interfaith Summit in New York in 2014: "As representatives from different faith and religious traditions, we stand together to express deep concern for the consequences of climate change on the earth and its people, all entrusted, as our faiths reveal, to our common care. Climate change is indeed a threat to life, a precious gift we have received and that we need to care for."


title: Sustainability

text: Individuals can change their lifestyles and practice ethical consumerism and embrace frugality to live more sustainably. Sustainable living approaches can reduce environmental impacts by altering the built environment to make cities more sustainable. Such approaches can include sustainable transport, sustainable architecture and zero emission housing. Research can identify the main issues to focus on (e.g., flying, meat and dairy products, car driving, and household sufficiency) and how cultures of sufficiency, care, solidarity, and simplicity can be created.


title: Sustainability

text: Young people are using a combination of activism, litigation, and on-the-ground efforts to advancing sustainability, particularly in the area of climate action.


title: Sustainability

text: The concepts of sustainability and sustainable development have been criticized from different angles. According to Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of the first report to the Club of Rome, called "The Limits to Growth", many people deceive themselves by using the Brundtland definition of sustainability. This is because the needs of the present generation are actually not met today, and the economic activities to meet present needs will substantially diminish the options of future generations. Another criticism is that the paradigm of sustainability is no longer suitable as a guide for transformation due to the fact that our societies are "socially and ecologically self-destructive consumer societies".


title: Sustainability

text: Some scholars have even proclaimed the end of the concept of sustainability due to "the realities of the Anthropocene"; humans now have a significant impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems (for example causing unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss and climate change). It might become impossible to pursue a goal of sustainability when faced with these complex, radical, and dynamic issues. Others have called sustainability a utopian ideal: "we need to keep sustainability as an ideal; an ideal which we might never reach, which might be utopian, but still a necessary one".


title: Sustainability

text: The term has been hijacked and lost its meaning: "Ask anyone what it means and they will give you a wide range of answers from saving the planet to recycling". As sustainability is a concept that provides a normative structure (describing what human society regards as good or desirable), a specific definition may never be possible.


title: Sustainability

text: On the other hand, while "sustainability" is vague and contested it is not meaningless. Although lacking in a singular definition, a concept such as sustainability is still useful. Scholars have pointed out that its fuzziness can actually be liberating, since it means that "the basic goal of sustainability (maintaining or improving desirable conditions, and more broadly strengthening the capacity to do so) can be pursued with more flexibility".


title: Sustainability

text: Sustainability has a reputation as a buzzword. Confusion and mistrust can result when special interest groups attempt to apply the terms "sustainability" and "sustainable development" in ways that are contradictory to more widely accepted conceptualizations. Ambiguous use of the term is problematic. Therefore, clear identification of how the term is being used in a particular situation is beneficial.


title: Sustainability

text: Greenwashing is the practice of deceptive marketing by a company or organization by providing misleading information about the sustainability of a product, policy, or other environment-harming activity. This makes products appear more sustainable (more environmentally friendly, natural, healthier, free of chemicals, recyclable, less wasteful of natural resources) than they actually are. Investors are wary of this issue as it exposes them to risk. The reliability of eco-labels is also doubtful in some cases. Ecolabelling is a voluntary method of environmental performance certification and labelling that is attached to food and consumer products. The most credible eco-labels are those that are developed with close participation from all relevant stakeholders.


title: Mercia

text: Mercia (, ; ) was one of the three notable Anglic kingdoms founded after Sub-Roman Britain was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred around the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlands of England.


title: Mercia

text: A Latinisation of an Old English word derived from the Mercian dialect, , meaning "borderland" (from which the Modern English word march also comes), the kingdom was rendered as or in the West Saxon dialect. The name is still used as a geographic designation by a wide range of organisations: military units, public, commercial and voluntary bodies.


title: Mercia

text: The royal court moved around the kingdom without a fixed capital city. Early in its existence Repton seems to have been the location of an important royal estate. According to the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", it was from Repton in 873–874 that the Great Heathen Army deposed the King of Mercia. Slightly earlier, King Offa seems to have favoured Tamworth. It was there where he was crowned and spent many a Christmas.


title: Mercia

text: For 300 years (between 600 and 900), known as Mercian Supremacy or the "Golden Age of Mercia", having annexed or gained submissions from five of the other six kingdoms of the Heptarchy (East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex), Mercia dominated England south of the River Humber. During King Offa's reign, a dyke was created to have the boundary between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms. Nicholas Brooks noted that "the Mercians stand out as by far the most successful of the various early Anglo-Saxon peoples until the later ninth century", and some historians, such as Sir Frank Stenton, believe the unification of England south of the Humber estuary was achieved during Offa's reign.


title: Mercia

text: King Peada converted to Christianity around 656, the Diocese of Mercia was founded in this year, with the first bishop (Diuma) based at Repton. The religion firmly established in the kingdom by the late 7th century. After 13 years at Repton, 669 AD, Saint Chad (the fifth bishop) moved the bishopric to Lichfield and, in 691 AD, the Diocese of Mercia became the Diocese of Lichfield. There has been a diocese based in the city ever since. For a brief period between 787 and 799 or 803 the diocese was an archbishopric. The current bishop, Michael Ipgrave, is the 99th since the diocese was established.


title: Mercia

text: At the end of the 9th century, following the invasions of the Vikings and their Great Heathen Army, Danelaw absorbed much of the former Mercian territory. Danelaw at its height included London, all of East Anglia and most of the North of England.


title: Mercia

text: The final Mercian king, Ceolwulf II, died in 879 with the kingdom appearing to have lost its political independence. Initially, it was ruled by a lord or ealdorman under the overlordship of Alfred the Great, who styled himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". The kingdom had a brief period of independence in the mid-10th century and in 1016, by which time it was viewed as a province with temporary independence. Wessex conquered and united all the kingdoms into the Kingdom of England. The kingdom became an earldom until 1071.


title: Mercia

text: Mercia's exact evolution at the start of the Anglo-Saxon era remains more obscure than that of Northumbria, Kent, or even Wessex. Mercia developed an effective political structure and adopted Christianity later than the other kingdoms. Archaeological surveys show that Angles settled the lands north of the River Thames by the 6th century. The name "Mercia" is Old English for "boundary folk" (see Welsh Marches), and the traditional interpretation is that the kingdom originated along the frontier between the native Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon invaders. However, Peter Hunter Blair argued an alternative interpretation: that they emerged along the frontier between Northumbria and the inhabitants of the Trent river valley.


title: Mercia

text: Although its earliest boundaries remain obscure, a general agreement persists that the territory that was called "the first of the Mercians" in the Tribal Hidage covered much of south Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire and northern Warwickshire.


title: Mercia

text: The earliest person named in any records as a king of Mercia is Creoda, said to have been the great-grandson of Icel. Coming to power around 584, he built a fortress at Tamworth which became the seat of Mercia's kings. His son Pybba succeeded him in 593. Cearl, a kinsman of Creoda, followed Pybba in 606; in 615, Cearl gave his daughter Cwenburga in marriage to Edwin, king of Deira, whom he had sheltered while he was an exiled prince.


title: Mercia

text: The Mercian kings were the only Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy ruling house known to claim a direct family link with a pre-migration Continental Germanic monarchy.


title: Mercia

text: The next Mercian king, Penda, ruled from about 626 or 633 until 655. Some of what is known about Penda comes from the hostile account of Bede, who disliked him – both as an enemy to Bede's own Northumbria and as a pagan. However, Bede admits that Penda freely allowed Christian missionaries from Lindisfarne into Mercia and did not restrain them from preaching. In 633 Penda and his ally Cadwallon of Gwynedd defeated and killed Edwin, who had become not only ruler of the newly unified Northumbria, but bretwalda, or high king, over the southern kingdoms. When another Northumbrian king, Oswald, arose and again claimed overlordship of the south, he also suffered defeat and death at the hands of Penda and his allies – in 642 at the Battle of Maserfield. In 655, after a period of confusion in Northumbria, Penda brought 30 sub-kings to fight the new Northumbrian king Oswiu at the Battle of Winwaed, in which Penda in turn lost the battle and his life.


title: Mercia

text: The battle led to a temporary collapse of Mercian power. Penda's son Peada, who had converted to Christianity at Repton in 653, succeeded his father as king of Mercia; Oswiu set up Peada as an under-king; but in the spring of 656 he was murdered and Oswiu assumed direct control of the whole of Mercia. A Mercian revolt in 658 threw off Northumbrian domination and resulted in the appearance of another son of Penda, Wulfhere, who ruled Mercia as an independent kingdom (though he apparently continued to render tribute to Northumbria for a while) until his death in 675. Wulfhere initially succeeded in restoring the power of Mercia, but the end of his reign saw a serious defeat by Northumbria. The next king, Æthelred, defeated Northumbria in the Battle of the Trent in 679, settling once and for all the long-disputed control of the former kingdom of Lindsey. Æthelred was succeeded by Cœnred, son of Wulfhere; both these kings became better known for their religious activities than anything else, but the king who succeeded them in 709, Ceolred, is said in a letter of Saint Boniface to have been a dissolute youth who died insane. So ended the rule of the direct descendants of Penda.


title: Mercia

text: At some point before the accession of Æthelbald in 716 the Mercians conquered the region around Wroxeter, known to the Welsh as Pengwern or as "The Paradise of Powys". Elegies written in the persona of its dispossessed rulers record the sorrow at this loss.


title: Mercia

text: The next important king of Mercia, Æthelbald, reigned from 716 to 757. For the first few years of his reign he had to face two strong rival kings, Wihtred of Kent and Ine of Wessex. But when Wihtred died in 725, and Ine abdicated in 726 to become a monk in Rome, Æthelbald was free to establish Mercia's hegemony over the rest of the Anglo-Saxons south of the Humber. Æthelbald suffered a setback in 752, when the West Saxons under Cuthred defeated him, but he seems to have restored his supremacy over Wessex by 757.


title: Mercia

text: In July 2009, the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold was discovered by Terry Herbert in a field near Lichfield in Staffordshire. Lichfield functioned as the religious centre of Mercia. The artefacts have tentatively been dated by Svante Fischer and Jean Soulat to around AD 600–800. Whether the hoard was deposited by Anglo-Saxon pagans or Christians remains unclear, as does the purpose of the deposit.


title: Mercia

text: After the murder of Æthelbald by one of his bodyguards in 757, a civil war broke out which concluded with the victory of Offa, a descendant of Pybba. Offa (reigned 757 to 796) had to build anew the hegemony which his predecessor had exercised over the southern English, and he did this so successfully that he became the greatest king Mercia had ever known. Not only did he win battles and dominate Southern England, but also he took an active hand in administering the affairs of his kingdom, founding market towns and overseeing the first major issues of gold coins in Britain; he assumed a role in the administration of the Catholic Church in England (sponsoring the short-lived archbishopric of Lichfield, 787 to 799), and even negotiated with Charlemagne as an equal. Offa is credited with the construction of Offa's Dyke, which marked the border between Wales and Mercia.


title: Mercia

text: Offa exerted himself to ensure that his son Ecgfrith of Mercia would succeed him, but after Offa's death in July 796 Ecgfrith survived for only five months, and the kingdom passed to a distant relative named Coenwulf in December 796. In 821 Coenwulf's brother Ceolwulf succeeded to the Mercian kingship; he demonstrated his military prowess by his attack on and destruction of the fortress of Deganwy in Gwynedd. The power of the West Saxons under Egbert (King of Wessex from 802 to 839) grew during this period, however, and in 825 Egbert defeated the Mercian king Beornwulf (who had overthrown Ceolwulf in 823) at Ellendun.


title: Mercia

text: The Battle of Ellendun proved decisive. At this point, Mercia lost control of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and possibly also Essex. Beornwulf was slain while suppressing a revolt amongst the East Angles, and his successor, a former ealdorman named Ludeca (reigned 826–827), met the same fate. Another ealdorman, Wiglaf, subsequently ruled for less than two years before Egbert of Wessex drove him out of Mercia. In 830 Wiglaf regained independence for Mercia, but by this time Wessex had clearly become the dominant power in England. "Circa" 840 Beorhtwulf succeeded Wiglaf.


title: Mercia

text: In 852, Burgred came to the throne, and with Ethelwulf of Wessex subjugated North Wales. In 868 Danish invaders occupied Nottingham. The Danes drove Burgred from his kingdom in 874 and Ceolwulf II took his place. In 877 the Danes seized the eastern part of Mercia, which became part of the Danelaw. Ceolwulf, the last king of Mercia, left with the western half, reigned until 879. From about 883 until his death in 911 Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, ruled Mercia under the overlordship of Wessex. Alfred changed his title from 'king of the West Saxons' to 'king of the Anglo-Saxons' to reflect the acceptance of his overlordship of all southern England not under Danish rule. All coins struck in Mercia after the disappearance of Ceolwulf in were in the name of the West Saxon king. Æthelred had married Æthelflæd ( 870 – 12 June 918), daughter of Alfred the Great of Wessex (), and she assumed power when her husband became ill at some time in the last ten years of his life.


title: Mercia

text: After Æthelred's death in 911 Æthelflæd ruled as "Lady of the Mercians", but Alfred's successor as King of the Anglo-Saxons, Edward the Elder (), took control of London and Oxford, which Alfred had placed under Æthelred's control. Æthelflæd and her brother continued Alfred's policy of building fortified burhs, and by 918 they had conquered the southern Danelaw in East Anglia and Danish Mercia.


title: Mercia

text: When Æthelflæd died in 918, Ælfwynn, her daughter by Æthelred, succeeded as "Second Lady of the Mercians", but within six months Edward had deprived her of all authority in Mercia and taken her to Wessex. Edward was succeeded as king of the Anglo-Saxons by his eldest son Æthelstan (), who had been brought up in Mercia, and he was immediately accepted as king, but not in Wessex until the following year. In 927 he conquered Northumbria and thus became the first king of all England. Mercia briefly regained a political existence separate from Wessex in 955–959, when Edgar became king of Mercia, and again in 1016, when Cnut and Edmund Ironside divided the English kingdom between themselves, with Cnut taking Mercia. Mercia maintained its separate identity as an earldom until the Norman Conquest in 1066.


title: Mercia

text: The dialect thrived between the 8th and 13th centuries and was referred to by John Trevisa, writing in 1387:


title: Mercia

text: J. R. R. Tolkien is one of many scholars who have studied and promoted the Mercian dialect of Old English, and introduced various Mercian terms into his legendarium – especially in relation to the Kingdom of Rohan, otherwise known as the "Mark" (a name cognate with "Mercia"). The Mercian dialect is the basis of Tolkien's language of Rohan, and a number of its kings are given the same names as monarchs who appear in the Mercian royal genealogy, e.g. Fréawine, Fréaláf and Éomer (see List of kings of the Angles).


title: Mercia

text: The first kings of Mercia were pagans, and they resisted the encroachment of Christianity longer than other kingdoms in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.


title: Mercia

text: Mercian rulers remained resolutely pagan until the reign of Peada in 656, although this did not prevent them joining coalitions with Christian Welsh rulers to resist Northumbria. The first appearance of Christianity in Mercia, however, had come at least thirty years earlier, following the Battle of Cirencester of 628, when Penda incorporated the formerly West Saxon territories of Hwicce into his kingdom.


title: Mercia

text: The conversion of Mercia to Christianity occurred in the latter part of the 7th century, and by the time of Penda's defeat and death, Mercia was largely surrounded by Christian states. Diuma, an Irish monk and one of Oswiu's missionaries, was subsequently ordained a bishop – the first to operate in Mercia. Christianity finally gained a foothold in Mercia when Oswiu supported Peada as sub-king of the Middle Angles, requiring him to marry Oswiu's daughter, Alchflaed, and to accept her religion.


title: Mercia

text: Decisive steps to Christianise Mercia were taken by Chad (Latinised by Bede as "Ceadda"), the fifth bishop to operate in Mercia. This controversial figure was given land by King Wulfhere to build a monastery at Lichfield. Evidence suggests that the Lichfield Gospels were made in Lichfield around 730. As in other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the many small monasteries established by the Mercian kings allowed the political/military and ecclesiastical leadership to consolidate their unity through bonds of kinship.


title: Mercia

text: For knowledge of the internal composition of the Kingdom of Mercia, we must rely on a document of uncertain age (possibly late 7th century), known as the "Tribal Hidage" – an assessment of the extent (but not the location) of land owned (reckoned in hides), and therefore the military obligations and perhaps taxes due, by each of the Mercian tribes and subject kingdoms by name. This hidage exists in several manuscript versions, some as late as the 14th century. It lists a number of peoples, such as the Hwicce, who have now vanished, except for reminders in various placenames. The major subdivisions of Mercia were as follows:


title: Mercia

text: After Mercia was annexed by Wessex in the early 10th century, the West Saxon rulers divided it into shires modelled after their own system, cutting across traditional Mercian divisions. These shires survived mostly intact until 1974, and even today still largely follow their original boundaries.


title: Mercia

text: The term "midlands" is first recorded (as "mydlonde-shiris") in 1475. John Bateman, writing in 1876 or 1883, referred to contemporary Cheshire and Staffordshire landholdings as being in Mercia. The most credible source for the idea of a contemporary Mercia is Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels. The first of these appeared in 1874 and Hardy himself considered it the origin of the conceit of a contemporary Wessex. Bram Stoker set his 1911 novel "The Lair of the White Worm" in a contemporary Mercia that may have been influenced by Hardy, whose secretary was a friend of Stoker's brother. Although 'Edwardian Mercia' never had the success of 'Victorian Wessex', it was an idea that appealed to the higher echelons of society. In 1908 Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of Birmingham University, wrote to his counterpart at Bristol, welcoming a new university worthy of "...the great Province of Wessex whose higher educational needs it will supply. It will be no rival, but colleague and co-worker with this university, whose province is Mercia...".


title: Mercia

text: The British Army has made use of several regional identities in naming larger, amalgamated formations. After the Second World War, the infantry regiments of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire were organised in the Mercian Brigade (1948–1968). Today, "Mercia" appears in the titles of two regiments, the Mercian Regiment, founded in 2007, which recruits in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, and parts of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, and the Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry, founded in 1992 as part of the Territorial Army. In 1967, the police forces of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire were combined into the West Mercia Constabulary, which changed its name to West Mercia Police in 2009.


title: Mercia

text: Telephone directories across the Midlands include a large number of commercial and voluntary organisations using "Mercia" in their names, and in 2012 a new football league was formed called the Mercian Regional Football League.


title: Mercia

text: Free Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, a commercial radio station, was originally launched in 1980 as Mercia Sound, later becoming Mercia FM.


title: Mercia

text: There is no authentic indigenous Mercian heraldic device, as heraldry did not develop in any recognizable form until the High Middle Ages.


title: Mercia

text: The saltire as a symbol of Mercia may have been in use since the time of King Offa. By the 13th century, the saltire had become the attributed arms of the Kingdom of Mercia. The arms are blazoned "Azure, a saltire Or", meaning a gold (or yellow) saltire on a blue field. The arms were subsequently used by the Abbey of St Albans, founded by King Offa of Mercia. With the dissolution of the Abbey and the incorporation of the borough of St Albans the device was used on the town's corporate seal and was officially recorded as the arms of the town at an heraldic visitation in 1634.


title: Mercia

text: The saltire is used as both a flag and a coat of arms. As a flag, it is flown from Tamworth Castle, the ancient seat of the Mercian Kings, to this day. The flag also appears on street signs welcoming people to Tamworth, the "ancient capital of Mercia". It was also flown outside Birmingham Council House during 2009 while the Staffordshire Hoard was on display in the city before being taken to the British Museum in London. The cross has been incorporated into a number of coats of arms of Mercian towns, including Tamworth, Leek and Blaby. It was recognised as the Mercian flag by the Flag Institute in 2014.


title: Mercia

text: The silver double-headed eagle surmounted by a golden three-pronged Saxon crown has been used by several units of the British Army as a heraldic device for Mercia since 1958, including the Mercian Regiment. It is derived from the attributed arms of Leofric, Earl of Mercia in the 11th century. It is worth noting, however, that Leofric is sometimes attributed a black, single-headed eagle instead.


title: Mercia

text: The wyvern, a type of dragon, came to have a strong association with Mercia in the 19th century. The Midland Railway, which used a white (silver) wyvern "sans legs" (legless) as its crest, having inherited it from the Leicester and Swannington Railway, asserted that the "wyvern was the standard of the Kingdom of Mercia", and that it was "a quartering in the town arms of Leicester". The symbol appeared on numerous stations and other company buildings in the region, and was worn as a silver badge by all uniformed employees. However, in 1897 the "Railway Magazine" noted that there appeared "to be no foundation that the wyvern was associated with the Kingdom of Mercia". It has been associated with Leicester since the time of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster and Leicester (c. 1278–1322), the most powerful lord in the Midlands, who used it as his personal crest, and was recorded in a heraldic visitation of the town in 1619.


title: Mercia

text: In Bram Stoker's 1911 novel "The Lair of the White Worm", explicitly set in Mercia (see above), the Mercian white wyvern "sans legs" of the Midland Railway was transformed into a monstrous beast, the eponymous worm of the title. The word "worm" is derived from Old English "wyrm" and originally referred to a dragon or serpent. "Wyvern" derives from Old Saxon "wivere", also meaning serpent, and is etymologically related to viper.


title: Mercia

text: The ultimate source for the symbolism of white dragons in England would appear to be Geoffrey of Monmouth's fictional work, "The History of the Kings of Britain" (c. 1136), which recounts an incident in the life of Merlin where a red dragon is seen fighting a white dragon and prevailing. The red dragon was taken to represent the Welsh and their eventual victory over the Anglo-Saxon invaders, symbolised by the white dragon.


title: Mercia

text: The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey has suggested that the Middle Kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's "Farmer Giles of Ham", a story dominated by a dragon, is based on Mercia, the part of England where Tolkien grew up. This dragon, Chrysophylax, though mostly hostile, eventually helps Giles found a realm of his own, the Little Kingdom. Shippey states further that "the Mark", the land of the Riders of Rohan – all of whom have names in the Mercian dialect of Old English – was once the usual term for central England, and it would have been pronounced and written "marc" rather than the West Saxon "mearc" or the Latinized "Mercia".


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the southern shore of Lake Michigan about east of downtown Chicago, Illinois. The city is adjacent to the Indiana Dunes National Park, and is within the Chicago metropolitan area.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. U.S. Steel had established the city as a company town to serve its steel mills. Although initially a very diverse city, after white flight in the 1970s, the city of Gary held the nation's highest percentage of African Americans for several decades.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: As of the 2020 census the city's population was 70,093, making it Indiana's ninth-largest city. Like other Rust Belt cities, Gary's once thriving steel industry has been significantly affected by the disappearance of local manufacturing jobs since the 1970s. As a result of this economic shift, the city's population has decreased drastically, having lost 61% of its population since 1960. Because of its large losses in population and deteriorating economy, Gary is often cited as an example of industrial decline and urban decay in America.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is serviced by the Gary/Chicago International Airport, an alternative airport to the Chicago region's two larger airports. The city's public transport is provided by the Gary Public Transportation Corporation and the South Shore Line passenger railway, which connects to the Chicago transit system. It is also home to a professional baseball team, the Gary SouthShore RailCats. In addition to its large steel mills, the city is known for being the birthplace of the Jackson family, a family of well-known entertainers whose members include singer Michael Jackson.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary, Indiana, was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as the home for its new plant, Gary Works. The city was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary was the site of civil unrest in the steel strike of 1919. On October 4, 1919, a riot broke out on Broadway, the main north-south street through downtown Gary, between steel workers and strike breakers brought in from outside. Three days later, Indiana governor James P. Goodrich declared martial law. Shortly thereafter, over 4,000 federal troops under the command of Major General Leonard Wood arrived to restore order.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The jobs offered by the steel industry provided Gary with very rapid growth and a diverse population within the first 26 years of its founding. According to the 1920 United States Census, 29.7% of Gary's population at the time was classified as foreign-born, mostly from eastern European countries, with another 30.8% classified as native-born with at least one foreign-born parent. By the 1930 United States Census, the first census in which Gary's population exceeded 100,000, the city was the fifth largest in Indiana and comparable in size to South Bend, Fort Wayne, and Evansville. At that time, 78.7% of the population was classified as white, with 19.3% of the population classified as foreign-born and another 25.9% as native-born with at least one foreign-born parent. In addition to white internal migrants, Gary had attracted numerous African-American migrants from the South in the Great Migration, and 17.8% of the population was classified as black. 3.5% were classified as Mexican (now likely to be identified as Hispanic, as some were likely American citizens in addition to immigrants).


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary's fortunes have risen and fallen with those of the steel industry. The growth of the steel industry brought prosperity to the community. Broadway was known as a commercial center for the region. Department stores and architecturally significant movie houses were built in the downtown area and the Glen Park neighborhood.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: In the 1960s, like many other American urban centers reliant on one particular industry, Gary entered a spiral of decline. Gary's decline was brought on by the growing overseas competitiveness in the steel industry, which had caused U.S. Steel to lay off many workers from the Gary area. The U.S. Steel Gary Works employed over 30,000 in 1970, declined to just 6,000 by 1990, and further declined to 5,100 in August 2015. Attempts to shore up the city's economy with major construction projects, such as a Holiday Inn hotel and the Genesis Convention Center, failed to reverse the decline.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: A rapid racial change occurred in Gary during the late 20th century. These population changes resulted in political change which reflected the racial demographics of Gary: the non-white share of the city's population increased from 21% in 1930, 39% in 1960, to 53% in 1970. Non-whites were primarily restricted to living in the Midtown section just south of downtown (per the 1950 Census, 97% of the black population of Gary was living in this neighborhood). Gary had one of the nation's first African-American mayors, Richard G. Hatcher, and hosted the groundbreaking 1972 National Black Political Convention.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gary had the highest percentage of African-Americans of U.S. cities with a population of 100,000 or more, 84% (as of the 2000 U.S. census). This no longer applies to Gary since the population of the city has now fallen well below 100,000 residents. As of 2013, the Gary Department of Redevelopment has estimated that one-third of all homes in the city are unoccupied and/or abandoned.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: U.S. Steel continues to be a major steel producer, but with only a fraction of its former level of employment. While Gary has failed to reestablish a manufacturing base since its population peak, two casinos opened along the Gary lakeshore in the 1990s, although this has been aggravated by the state closing of Cline Avenue, an important access to the area. Today, Gary faces the difficulties of a Rust Belt city, including unemployment and decaying infrastructure.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary has closed several of its schools within the last ten years. While some of the school buildings have been reused, most remain unused since their closing. As of 2014, Gary is considering closing additional schools in response to budget deficits.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary chief of police Thomas Houston was convicted of excessive force and abuse of authority in 2008; he died in 2010 while serving a three-year, five-month federal prison sentence.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: In April 2011, 75-year-old mayor Rudolph M. Clay announced that he would suspend his campaign for reelection as he was being treated for prostate cancer. He endorsed rival Karen Freeman-Wilson, who won the Democratic mayoral primary in May 2011. Freeman-Wilson won election with 87 percent of the vote and her term began in January 2012; she is the first woman elected mayor in the city's history. She was reelected in 2015. She was defeated in her bid for a third term in the 2019 Democratic primary by Lake County Assessor Jerome Prince. Since no challengers filed for the November 2019 general election, Prince's nomination is effectively tantamount to election, and officially succeeded Freeman-Wilson on January 1, 2020, two days after he was sworn in as the city's 21st mayor on December 30, 2019.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: In May 2021, a $300 million Hard Rock Casino location opened in the city. Branded as Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana, the location includes memorabilia from local natives Jackson 5 and a 1,950-seat Hard Rock Live performance hall.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The following single properties and national historic districts are listed on the National Register of Historic Places:


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Downtown Gary is separated by Broadway into two distinctive communities. Originally, the City of Gary consisted of The East Side, The West Side, The South Side (the area south of the train tracks near 9th Avenue), and Glen Park, located further South along Broadway. The East Side was demarcated by streets named after the States in order of their acceptance into the Union. This area contained mostly wood-frame houses, some of the earliest in the city, and became known in the 20th century for its ethnic populations from Europe and large families. The single-family houses had repeating house designs that alternated from one street to another, with some streets looking very similar. Among the East Side's most notable buildings were Memorial Auditorium (a large red-brick and stone civic auditorium and the site of numerous events, concerts and graduations), The Palace Theater, Emerson School, St. Luke's Church, H.C. Gordon & Sons, and Goldblatt's Department stores, in addition to the Fair Department Store. All fronted Broadway as the main street that divided Gary.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The West Side of Gary, or West of Broadway, the principal commercial street, had streets named after the presidents of the United States in order of their election. Lytton's, Hudson's ladies store, J.C. Penney, and Radigan Bros Furniture Store developed on the west side of Broadway. Developed later, this side of town was known for its masonry or brick residences, its taller and larger commercial buildings, including the Gary National Bank Building, Hotel Gary (now Genesis Towers), The Knights of Columbus Hotel & Building (now a seniors building fronting 5th Avenue), the Tivoli Theater (demolished), the U.S. Post Office, Main Library, Mercy and Methodist Hospitals and Holy Angels Cathedral and School. The West Side also had a secondary principal street, Fifth Avenue, which was lined with many commercial businesses, restaurants, theaters, tall buildings, and elegant apartment buildings. The West Side was viewed as having wealthier residents. The houses dated from about 1908 to the 1930s. Much of the West Side's housing were for executives of U.S. Steel and other prominent businessmen. Notable mansions were 413 Tyler Street and 636 Lincoln Street. Many of the houses were on larger lots. By contrast, a working-class area was made up of row houses made of poured concrete were arranged together and known as "Mill Houses"; they were built to house steel mill workers.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The areas known as Emerson and Downtown West combine to form Downtown Gary. It was developed in the 1920s and houses several pieces of impressive architecture, including the Moe House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and another, the Wynant House (1917), which was destroyed by fire. A significant number of older structures have been demolished in recent years because of the cost of restoration. Restructuring of the steel and other heavy industry in the late 20th century resulted in a loss of jobs, adversely affecting the city.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Abandoned buildings in the downtown area include historic structures such as Union Station, the Palace Theater, and City Methodist Church. A large area of the downtown neighborhood (including City Methodist) was devastated by a major fire on October 12, 1997. Interstate 90 was constructed between downtown Gary and the United States Steel plant.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Ambridge Mann is a neighborhood located on Gary's near west side along 5th Avenue. Ambridge was developed for workers at the nearby steel plant in the 1910s and 1920s. It is named after the American Bridge Works, which was a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The neighborhood is home to a huge stock of prairie-style and art deco homes. The Gary Masonic Temple was located in the neighborhood, along with the Ambassador apartment building. Located just south of Interstate 90, the neighborhood can be seen while passing Buchanan Street.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Brunswick is located on Gary's far west side. The neighborhood is located just south of Interstate 90 and can also be seen from the expressway. The Brunswick area includes the Tri-City Plaza shopping center on West 5th Avenue (U.S. 20). The area is south of the Gary Chicago International Airport.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Downtown West is located in north-central Gary on the west side of Broadway just south of Interstate 90. The Genesis Convention Center, the Gary Police Department, the Lake Superior Court House, and the Main Branch of the Gary Public Library are located along 5th Avenue. A new 123-unit mixed-income apartment development was built using a HUD HOPE VI grant in 2006. The Adam Benjamin Metro Center is located just north of 4th Avenue. It is operated by the Gary Public Transportation Corporation and serves as a multi-modal hub. It serves both as the Downtown Gary South Shore train station and an intercity bus stop.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Tolleston is one of Gary's oldest neighborhoods, predating much of the rest of the city. It was platted by George Tolle in 1857 when the railroads were constructed in this area. This area is west of Midtown and south of Ambridge Mann. Tarrytown is a subdivision located in Tolleston between Whitcomb Street and Clark Road.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Black Oak is located on the far southwest side of Gary, in the vicinity of the Burr Street exit to the Borman Expressway. It was annexed in the 1970s. Prior to that, Black Oak was an unincorporated area informally associated with Hammond, and the area has Hammond telephone numbers. After three referendums, the community voters approved annexation, having been persuaded by Mayor Hatcher that they would benefit more from services provided by the city than from those provided by the county. In the 21st century, it is the only majority-white neighborhood in Gary.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Glen Park is located on Gary's far south side and is made up mostly of mid-twentieth-century houses. Glen Park is divided from the remainder of the city by the Borman Expressway. The northern portion of Glen Park is home to Gary's Gleason Park Golf Course and the campus of Indiana University Northwest. The far western portion of Glen Park is home to the Village Shopping Center. Glen Park includes the 37th Avenue corridor at Broadway.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Midtown is located south of Downtown Gary, along Broadway. In the pre-1960s days of "de facto" segregation, this developed historically as a "black" neighborhood as African Americans came to Gary from the rural South in the Great Migration to seek jobs in the industrial economy.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Aetna is located on Gary's far east side along the Dunes Highway. Aetna predates the city of Gary. This company town was founded in 1881 by the Aetna Powder Works, an explosives company. Their factory closed after the end of World War I.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The Town of Aetna was annexed by Gary in 1928, around the same time that the city annexed the Town of Miller. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Gary's prosperous industries helped generate residential and other development in Aetna, resulting in an impressive collection of art deco architecture. The rest of the community was built after World War II and the Korean War in the 1950s, in a series of phases. On its south and east, Aetna borders the undeveloped floodplain of the Little Calumet River.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Emerson is located in north-central Gary on the east side of Broadway. Located just south of Interstate 90, Gary City Hall is located in Emerson, along with the Indiana Department of Social Services building and the Calumet Township Trustee's office. A 6,000-seat minor league baseball stadium for the Gary SouthShore RailCats, U.S. Steel Yard, was constructed in 2002, along with contiguous commercial space and minor residential development.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Miller Beach, also known simply as Miller, is on Gary's far northeast side. Settled in the 1850s and incorporated as an independent town in 1907, Miller was annexed by the city of Gary in 1918. Miller developed around the old stagecoach stop and train station known by the 1850s as Miller's Junction and/or Miller's Station. Miller Beach is racially and economically diverse. It attracts investor interest due to the many year-round and summer homes within walking distance of Marquette Park and Lake Michigan. Prices for lakefront property are affordable compared to those in Illinois suburban communities. Lake Street provides shopping and dining options for Miller Beach visitors and residents. East Edge, a development of 28 upscale condominium, townhome, and single-family homes, began construction in 2007 at the eastern edge of Miller Beach along County Line Road, one block south of Lake Michigan.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The city is located at the southern end of the former lake bed of the prehistoric Lake Chicago and the current Lake Michigan. Most of the city's soil, to nearly one foot below the surface, is pure sand. The sand beneath Gary, and on its beaches, is of such volume and quality that for over a century companies have mined it, especially for the manufacture of glass.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: According to the 2010 census, Gary has a total area of , of which (or 87.22%) is land and (or 12.78%) is water.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is "T" shaped, with its northern border on Lake Michigan. In the northwesternmost section, Gary borders Hammond and East Chicago; 165th Street, one of several roads connecting Hammond and Gary, has been walled off from Gary since 1981, initially due to a toxic flood. Miller Beach, Gary's easternmost neighborhood, borders Lake Station and Portage. Gary's southernmost section borders Griffith, Hobart, Merrillville, and unincorporated Ross. Gary is about from the Chicago Loop.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is listed by the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system as humid continental (Dfa). In July and August, the warmest months, high temperatures average 84 °F (29 °C) and peak just above 100 °F (38 °C), and low temperatures average 63 °F (17 °C). In January and February, the coldest months, high temperatures average around 29 °F (−2 °C) and low temperatures average 13 °F (−11 °C), with at least a few days of temperatures dipping below 0 °F (−18 °C).


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The weather in Gary is greatly regulated by its proximity to Lake Michigan. Weather varies yearly. In the summer months Gary is humid. The city's yearly precipitation averages about 40 inches. Summer is the rainiest season. Winters vary but are predominantly snowy. Snowfall in Gary averages approximately 25 inches per year. Sometimes large blizzards hit because of "lake effect snow", a phenomenon whereby large amounts of water evaporated from the lake deposit onto the shoreline areas as inordinate amounts of snow.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The change in the economy and resulting loss of jobs has caused a drop in population by more than half since its peak in 1960.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: "Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race."


title: Gary, Indiana

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 80,294 people, 31,380 households, and 19,691 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 39,531 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 84.8% African American, 10.7% White, 0.3% Native American, 0.2% Asian, 1.8% from other races, and 2.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 5.1% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 8.9% of the population in 2010, down from 39.1% in 1970.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: There were 31,380 households, of which 33.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 25.2% were married couples living together, 30.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 6.7% had a male householder with no wife present, and 37.2% were non-families. 32.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.23.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The median age in the city was 36.7 years. 28.1% of residents were under the age of 18; 8.6% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 21.8% were from 25 to 44; 27.1% were from 45 to 64; and 14.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 46.0% male and 54.0% female.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 102,746 people, 38,244 households, and 25,623 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 43,630 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 84.03% African American, 11.92% White, 0.21% Native American, 0.14% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 1.97% from other races, and 1.71% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 4.93% of the population.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: There were 38,244 households, out of which 31.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 30.2% were married couples living together, 30.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.0% were non-families. 28.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.66 and the average family size was 3.28.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 29.9% under the age of 18, 10.1% from 18 to 24, 25.1% from 25 to 44, 22.2% from 45 to 64, and 12.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 84.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 78.0 males.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The median income for a household in the city was $27,195, and the median income for a family was $32,205. Males had a median income of $34,992 versus $24,432 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,383. About 22.2% of families and 25.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.9% of those under age 18 and 14.1% of those age 65 or over.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Meredith Willson's 1957 Broadway musical "The Music Man" featured the song "Gary, Indiana", in which lead character (and con man) Professor Harold Hill wistfully recalls his purported hometown, then prosperous. Hill claims to be an alumnus of "Gary Conservatory of Music, Class of '05," but this is later revealed to be another of his lies. The City of Gary was not founded until 1906. Willson's musical, set in 1912, was adapted both as a film of the same name released in 1962, and as a television film, produced in 2003.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The 1996 urban film "Original Gangstas" was filmed in the city. It starred Gary native Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree, and Isabel Sanford, among others. Since the early 2000s, Gary has been the setting for numerous films made by Hollywood filmmakers. In 2009, scenes for the remake of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" were filmed in Gary. Scenes from "" wrapped up filming on August 16, 2010.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The History Channel documentary "Life After People" was filmed in Gary, exploring areas that have deteriorated or been abandoned because of the loss of jobs and residents.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: In John Mellencamp's 1985 song, "Minutes to Memories", an old man on a bus, recalling his humble life, tells the young man beside him, "I worked my whole life in the steel mills of Gary."


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The Gary Public Library System consists of the main library at 220 West 5th Avenue and several branches: Brunswick Branch, W. E. B. DuBois Branch, J. F. Kennedy Branch, Tolleston Branch, and Woodson Branch. In March 2011, the Gary Library Board voted to close the main library on 5th Avenue and the Tolleston branch in what officials said was their best economic option. The main library closed at the end of 2011. The building now houses a museum.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Lake County Public Library operates the Black Oak Branch at 5921 West 25th Avenue in the Gary city limits. In addition, Indiana University Northwest operates the John W. Anderson Library on its campus.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Most public schools in Gary are administered by the Gary Community School Corporation. The other public schools within the city are administered by Lake Ridge Schools Corporation, which is the school system for the Black Oak neighborhood and unincorporated Calumet Township. Due to annexation law, Black Oak residents retained their original school system and were not required to attend Gary public schools. In 1927, it was mandated that Black students attend a separate high school.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Charter schools in Indiana, including those in Gary, are granted charters by one of a small number of chartering institutions. Indiana charter schools are generally managed in cooperation between the chartering institution, a local board of parents and community members, salaried school administrators, and a management company. Charter schools in Gary as of 2011 include Thea Bowman Leadership Academy, Charter School of the Dunes, Gary Lighthouse Charter School (formerly Blessed Sacrament Parish and Grade School), and 21st Century Charter.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is served by two major newspapers based outside the city, and by a Gary-based, largely African-American interest paper. These papers provide regional topics, and cover events in Gary.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is served by five local broadcasters plus government access and numerous Chicago area radio and stations, and by other nearby stations in Illinois and Indiana.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is served by the Gary Police Department and the Lake County Sheriff. While 1 in 270 people are victimized by a violent crime in Indiana, that rate is 1 in 177 in Gary.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: The Gary Fire Department (GFD) provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the city of Gary.


title: Gary, Indiana

text: Gary is the hometown of the Jackson family, a family of musicians who influenced the sound of modern popular music. In 1950, Joseph and Katherine Jackson moved from East Chicago, Indiana into their two-bedroom house at 2300 Jackson Street. They had married on November 5, 1949. Their entertainer children later recorded a song entitled "2300 Jackson Street" (1989). The Jackson children include:


title: Storm Reid

text: Storm Reid is an American actress. After playing an small role in the television film "A Cross to Bear" (2012), Reid made her acting debut with an appearance in the period drama film "12 Years a Slave" (2013). She earned recognition for a starring role in the superhero film "Sleight" (2016), and subsequently had her breakthrough with the fantasy film "A Wrinkle in Time" (2018), for which she received nominations for the Teen Choice Award for Choice Fantasy Movie Actress and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Breakthrough Role in a Motion Picture.


title: Storm Reid

text: Reid has appeared in the thriller film "Don't Let Go" (2019), for which her performance was praised, as well as the critically-acclaimed Netflix miniseries "When They See Us" (2019) and horror film "The Invisible Man" (2020). She currently appears in the HBO drama series "Euphoria" (2019–present) and played a minor role in the superhero film "The Suicide Squad" (2021). In 2020, Reid received a nomination for the BET YoungStars Award.


title: Storm Reid

text: Reid was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Rodney and Robyn Simpson Reid. Both of her parents are African American. She is the youngest of her siblings: elder brother Josh; and two sisters, Iman and Paris. From an early age, Reid aspired to become an actress, and at the age of 9, she and her family moved to Los Angeles for her to pursue acting.


title: Storm Reid

text: Reid began her professional acting career at a young age, debuting with the television film "A Cross To Bear" in 2012. In 2013, she starred as Emily in the historical drama film "12 Years a Slave", which received critical acclaim. In 2016, she starred as Tina in the science fiction drama film "Sleight", the younger sister of the film's protagonist, Bo. The film was a success, and was received positively. Also in 2016, she starred as Aki in the film "Lea to the Rescue", which was part of the "American Girl" film series.


title: Storm Reid

text: In 2017, she appeared as Patricia in the comedy-drama film "A Happening of Monumental Proportions", which had been received negatively by critics. Better received was her role as Meg Murry in Ava DuVernay's "A Wrinkle in Time", which was based on the novel of the same name. In spite of the film emerging as a box-office bomb, Reid's performance earned acclaim from critics, with some noting her take on the character as a highlight of the film. Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", Josh Spiegel stated that "Reid is one of the film’s biggest assets overall; Meg’s arc from being crippled by self-doubt to embracing her faults and her dysfunctional family is wonderfully realized through her expressive and subtle work." For the role, she earned a nomination for the Teen Choice Award for Choice Fantasy Movie Actress and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Breakthrough Role in a Motion Picture.


title: Storm Reid

text: In 2019, Reid starred as Lisa in two episodes of the critically acclaimed Netflix limited series "When They See Us". and began portraying the main role of Gia Bennett, the younger sister of the series' protagonist Rue, in the HBO teen drama series "Euphoria." That same year, she voiced Nia in the Hulu series "The Bravest Knight", and co-starred with David Oyelowo in the drama film "Don't Let Go" as Ashley, the latter of which earned her and Oyelowo positive reviews. "FilmSnobReviews" wrote that the pair "bring an emotion-filled performance to the screen, capturing grief and confusion to near perfection."


title: Storm Reid

text: In 2020, Reid starred as Sydney Lanier, the daughter of James Lanier, in the science fiction horror film "The Invisible Man", which was a commercial success and received critical acclaim. In the same year, she was nominated for the BET YoungStars Award. Reid joined the cast of the superhero film "The Suicide Squad" in 2019, and it was released in 2021. The following year, she starred opposite Colson Baker, Kevin Bacon and Travis Fimmel in the ensemble action feature "One Way". Reid will next star in leading roles in the horror film "Searching 2"—which was filmed over the COVID-19 pandemic—and the supernatural horror film "The Nun 2."


title: Storm Reid

text: In February 2017, Reid was in a relationship with actor Sayeed Shahidi. In fall of 2021, she began attending the University of Southern California.


title: David Oyelowo

text: David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo ( ; born 1 April 1976) is a British actor, director and producer. His accolades include a Critics' Choice Award and two NAACP Image Awards as well as nominations for two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a BAFTA Award. In 2016, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to drama.


title: David Oyelowo

text: Oyelowo rose to prominence for portraying Martin Luther King Jr. in the biographical drama film "Selma" (2014) and Peter Snowdin in the HBO film "Nightingale" (2014), both of which garnered him critical acclaim. He also achieved praise for his roles as Louis Gaines in "The Butler" (2013), Seretse Khama in "A United Kingdom" (2016) and Robert Katende in "Queen of Katwe" (2016). He has also played supporting roles in the films "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (2011), "The Help" (2011), "Lincoln" (2012), "Red Tails" (2012) and "Jack Reacher" (2012).


title: David Oyelowo

text: On television, Oyelowo has played MI5 officer Danny Hunter in the British drama series "Spooks" (2002–2004) and Javert in the BBC miniseries "Les Misérables" (2018). He also provided the voice for Agent Alexsandr Kallus in the Lucasfilm Animation series "Star Wars Rebels" (2014–2018).


title: David Oyelowo

text: Oyelowo was born on 1 April 1976 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, to Nigerian parents. His father, Stephen, is from Oyo State, Western Nigeria, and his mother is Igbo, also from Southern Nigeria. He was brought up as a Baptist. He grew up on an estate in Tooting Bec, South London, until he was six, when his family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where his father worked for the national airline and his mother worked for a railway company. Oyelowo grew up idolizing Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington. Oyelowo attended a "military-style" boarding-school named Lagos State Model College, Meiran. They returned to London when Oyelowo was 14, settling in Islington. Oyelowo is an omoba (or prince) of the Yoruba people in the Nigerian chieftaincy system, his grandfather having been king of a "part of Oyo State called Awe". He has commented of his background: "It sounds way more impressive than it actually is. There are so many royal families in Africa", "royal families are a dime a dozen in Nigeria"; "what we think of as royalty in the UK is very different to royalty in Nigeria: if you were to throw a stone there, you would hit about 30 princes. So it's a bit more like being the Prince of Islington: it was useful for getting dates but probably not much else".


title: David Oyelowo

text: While enrolled in theatre studies at City and Islington College, his teacher suggested that he become an actor. Oyelowo enrolled for a year in an acting foundation course, at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). He finished his three-year training in 1998. He also spent time with the National Youth Theatre.


title: David Oyelowo

text: He began his stage career in 1999 when he was offered a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company playing roles in Ben Jonson's "Volpone", as the title character in "Oroonoko" (which he also performed in the BBC radio adaptation) and Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" (1999) alongside Guy Henry, Frances de la Tour and Alan Bates. However, he is best known for his next stage performance as King Henry VI in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2001 productions of Shakespeare's trilogy of plays about the king as a part of its season "". In a major landmark for colour-blind casting, Oyelowo was the first black actor to play an English king in a major production of Shakespeare, and although this casting choice was initially criticised by some in the media, Oyelowo's performance was critically acclaimed and later won the 2001 Ian Charleson Award for best performance by an actor under 30 in a classical play.


title: David Oyelowo

text: In 2005, he appeared in a production of "Prometheus Bound", which was revived in New York City in 2007. In 2006, he made his directorial debut on a production of "The White Devil", produced by Inservice, his theatre company in Brighton which is co-run with fellow Brighton-based actors Priyanga Burford, Israel Aduramo, Penelope Cobbuld, and his wife, Jessica. He played the title role in "Othello" in 2016 at the New York Theatre Workshop with Daniel Craig as Iago, directed by Sam Gold.


title: David Oyelowo

text: Oyelowo is best known for playing MI5 officer Danny Hunter on the British drama series "Spooks" (known in North America as "MI-5") from 2002 to 2004. He had before that appeared in "Tomorrow La Scala" (2002), "Maisie Raine" (1998) and "Brothers and Sisters" (1998). Soon after the end of his time on "Spooks" Oyelowo also appeared in the two Christmas specials of "As Time Goes By" (2005). In 2006, he appeared in the television film "Born Equal" alongside Nikki Amuka-Bird as a couple fleeing persecution in Nigeria – they also both appeared in "Shoot the Messenger" (2006) and in "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" (2008) as a husband and wife. Other cameos have included "Mayo" (guest-starring on 30 April 2006) and the television film "Sweet Nothing in My Ear" (2008, as defence attorney Leonard Grisham), while he has played recurring or main characters on "Five Days" (2007) and "The Passion" (2008, as Joseph of Arimathea).


title: David Oyelowo

text: In December 2009, he played the leading role of Gilbert in the BBC TV adaptation of Andrea Levy's novel "Small Island". In March 2010, he played the role of Keme Tobodo in the BBC's drama series "Blood and Oil". He starred in the HBO original film "Nightingale" (2014). He recently signed a deal with ViacomCBS.


title: David Oyelowo

text: He appeared as Olaudah Equiano in "Grace Unshackled – The Olaudah Equiano Story", a radio play adapting Equiano's autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano". This was first broadcast on BBC 7 on 8 April 2007, with his wife Jessica Oyelowo as Mrs. Equiano.


title: David Oyelowo

text: In 2007, Oyelowo was the reader for John le Carré's "The Mission Song". "AudioFile" magazine stated: "Think of David Oyelowo as a single musician playing all the instruments in a symphony. That is essentially what he manages in this inspired performance of John le Carré's suspense novel... Can it really have been only one man in the narrator's recording booth? This virtuoso performance makes that seem impossible." In 2015, he was selected to portray James Bond in an audiobook version of "Trigger Mortis", written by Anthony Horowitz.


title: David Oyelowo

text: , he provides the voice of Imperial Security Bureau agent Alexsandr Kallus on the animated series "Star Wars Rebels". , Oyelowo voices the spirit of Scar, the main antagonist in season 2 of "The Lion Guard". Oyelowo voiced the Tiger in a television adaptation of "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" which aired on Channel 4 for Christmas 2019.


title: David Oyelowo

text: In 2012, Oyelowo appeared in "Middle of Nowhere". Writer-director Ava DuVernay had been a fan of his work and had considered asking him to take the role, however before she could, Oyelowo received the script coincidentally from a friend of a friend of DuVernay's who happened to be sitting next to him on the plane and was considering investing in the project. The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival to critical raves. That same year Oyelowo appeared in Lee Daniels' "The Paperboy", which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Oyelowo reunited with Daniels the following year in "The Butler".


title: David Oyelowo

text: In 2014, Oyelowo formed his own independent production company, Yoruba Saxon Productions which has co-produced movies that featured him including, "Nightingale", "Captive", "Five Nights in Maine" and most recently, "A United Kingdom".


title: David Oyelowo

text: He worked with DuVernay again for "Selma" (2014), playing civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. The film, based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches, had originally been set to be directed by Lee Daniels, but the project was dropped by Daniels so he could focus on "The Butler".


title: David Oyelowo

text: He is slated to star with Lupita Nyong'o in a film adaptation of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel "Americanah". The story follows a pair of young Nigerian immigrants who face a lifetime of struggle while their relationship endures.


title: David Oyelowo

text: In February 2019, it was announced that Oyelowo had joined the "Peter Rabbit" cast with James Corden, Rose Byrne and Domhnall Gleeson reprising their roles as the title character, Bea and Thomas McGregor for due to be released in March 2021.


title: David Oyelowo

text: In 2020, Oyelowo starred alongside George Clooney in the Netflix film "The Midnight Sky". More recently, his Yoruba Saxon company signed a first look deal with Disney. The first film to come out of the deal will be "The Return of the Rocketeer", a Disney+-exclusive sequel to the 1991 film "The Rocketeer", which Oyelowo will produce alongside his wife, Jessica, and Brigham Taylor. Oyelowo is also being considered to star in the film, which will center on "a retired Tuskegee airman who takes up the Rocketeer mantle".


title: David Oyelowo

text: For his portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. in "Selma", Oyelowo received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture. He received his first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, while also receiving a nomination for Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor.


title: David Oyelowo

text: Also in 2014, for his performance in "Nightingale", he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Movie/Miniseries and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special and a Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.


title: David Oyelowo

text: Oyelowo was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to drama.


title: David Oyelowo

text: He is married to actress Jessica Oyelowo, who he met at LAMDA and with whom he has four children. They live in Los Angeles, California.


title: David Oyelowo

text: A devout Christian, Oyelowo has stated that he believes God called him to play Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Reflecting on his portrayal of King in the film "Selma", Oyelowo has asserted: "I always knew that in order to play Dr. King, I had to have God flow through me because when you see Dr. King giving those speeches, you see that he is moving in his anointing."


title: David Oyelowo

text: A dual citizen, Oyelowo and his wife became naturalized US citizens on 20 July 2016. On doing so, he stated: "I did a film called "Selma"... and that film centres on voting rights and I've lived here for nearly 10 years now and to be walking around and doing a film about voting rights and telling people to vote, and you can't vote yourself is a little hypocritical. I decided it's time to do it and no time better than now."


title: Azealia Banks

text: Azealia Amanda Banks ( ; born May 31, 1991) is an American rapper, singer and songwriter. Raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, she began releasing music through Myspace in 2008 before being signed to XL Recordings at age 18. In 2011, her debut single "212" went viral and entered several international charts. She subsequently signed with Interscope and Polydor Records before later separating in July 2013.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Banks became an independent artist and started her own independent record label, Chaos & Glory Recordings. She is currently signed to Parlophone and Warner Records. She has professionally released two mixtapes ("Fantasea" in 2012, and "Slay-Z" in 2016), one studio album ("Broke with Expensive Taste" in 2014), and two extended plays ("1991" in 2012 and "Icy Colors Change" in 2018). In December 2017, Banks had her film debut in the musical drama "Love Beats Rhymes", portraying the lead character.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Banks' works have garnered acclaim from critics, drawing on various sounds including dutch house, rap, pop, electronic music and avant-garde. "212" has often been considered as one of the best songs of the century by various music publications, including Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. Throughout her career, Banks's social media presence and outspoken views, especially on U.S. politics and race, have attracted significant controversy.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Azealia Amanda Banks was born on May 31, 1991, in New York City's Manhattan borough; she was the youngest of three. Her single mother raised her and her two siblings in Harlem, after their father died of pancreatic cancer when she was two years old. Following her father's death, Banks says that her mother "became really abusive—physically and verbally. Like she would hit me and my sisters with baseball bats, bang our heads up against walls, and she would always tell me I was ugly. I remember once she threw out all the food in the fridge, just so we wouldn't have anything to eat." Due to escalating violence, Banks moved out of her mother's home at age 14 to live with her older sister.


title: Azealia Banks

text: At a young age, Banks became interested in musical theater, dancing, acting, and singing. At age 16, she starred in a production of the comedy-noir musical "City of Angels", where she was found by an agent who sent her to auditions for TBS, Nickelodeon, and "Law & Order", all without success. At this point Banks decided to end her pursuit of an acting career, citing the stiff competition and overall sense of nonfulfillment. Because of this lack of fulfillment, she began writing rap and R&B songs as a creative outlet. She never finished high school, instead choosing to follow her dream of becoming a recording artist.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Under the moniker Miss Bank$, she released her debut recording, "Gimme a Chance", online on November 9, 2008. The recording was accompanied by the self-produced track "Seventeen", which sampled the Ladytron song of the same name. Banks sent both tracks to American DJ Diplo. Later that year, she signed a development deal with record label XL Recordings and began working with producer Richard Russell in London, leaving the label later that year due to conflicting ideas.


title: Azealia Banks

text: After leaving XL Recordings, Banks dropped the 'Miss Bank$' moniker and formally became Azealia Banks, which preceded a move to Montreal. Using YouTube as a portal, she uploaded several demo tracks, including "L8R" and a cover of "Slow Hands" by Interpol. After her Canadian visa expired, Banks returned to New York, where she sold keychains at a Manhattan jazz club and danced at a Queens strip club to make ends meet. "That's when I was really depressed", Banks said. "I don't have a manager, I don't have a boyfriend, I don't have any friends, I don't have any money. Here I am working at the strip club, trying not to say the wrong thing and get into fights with these girls who don't give a shit."


title: Azealia Banks

text: In September 2011, Banks released her debut single, "212", as a free digital download from her website. It was released officially on December 6, 2011, as the lead single from her EP "1991". The track attained European moderate chart success, peaking at #14 in the Netherlands, #12 in the United Kingdom and #7 in Ireland.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Though unsigned at the time, Banks began working with British producer Paul Epworth on a debut studio album. It was announced in December 2011 that she would feature on "Shady Love", a track on American band Scissor Sisters' fourth studio album, "Magic Hour", though the feature was uncredited. An accompanying music video was released in January 2012 following its radio premiere from Annie Mac (BBC Radio 1) on January 4, though the single's release was canceled for unconfirmed reasons. Banks released the track "NEEDSUMLUV (SXLND)" on the Internet on January 16, 2012, coinciding with what would have been the 33rd birthday of the late singer Aaliyah, who is sampled on the track. A week later saw the emergence of a second track, "Bambi", produced by Paul Epworth and selected as the soundtrack for a Thierry Mugler fashion show in Paris.


title: Azealia Banks

text: In May 2012, Banks announced plans to release a mixtape—originally titled "Fantastic"—titled "Fantasea". Preceding its release the tracks "Jumanji", "Aquababe", and "Nathan" (featuring rapper Styles P) were made available online. "Fantasea" was released via Banks's Twitter account on July 11, and was succeeded by the unveiling of Banks's online radio project, "Kunt.FM" the following week.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Banks's first EP, "1991", was released in the UK on May 28 and in the US the next day. The 4-track EP, which includes "212", was not eligible for the "UK Albums" chart, but the title track charted at #79 on the "UK Singles" chart. It also reached #133 on the US 200, while reaching #17 on the "US R&B/Hip-Hop" chart, #12 on the "US Rap" chart, and headin' "US Heat" chart. In 2013, "1991" was certified gold by the "Australian Recording Industry Association".


title: Azealia Banks

text: Banks was scheduled to release her second single, "Esta Noche", from "Fantasea", on September 25, 2012, but it was pulled the day of its release due to sampling disputes between Banks and its producer, Munchi. The next month, it was confirmed that Banks had worked with Lady Gaga on two tracks, "Ratchet" and "Red Flame", on Gaga's third studio album, "Artpop" (2013), but they did not make the final album cut, and have since not been released. Banks also revealed that she collaborated with Kanye West on G.O.O.D. Music's compilation album "Cruel Summer" but that her contributions did not make the final cut. On December 31, 2012, Banks released "BBD", which ultimately appeared on her debut album, "Broke with Expensive Taste".


title: Azealia Banks

text: Early in 2012, Banks revealed that her debut album would be called "Broke with Expensive Taste", and said the album would include contributions from musicians including Toko Yasuda, Theophilus London, Kevin Hussein, and Ariel Pink. She initially said the album's lead single would be a track titled "Miss Amor" and that it would be accompanied by a B-side, "Miss Camaraderie", both produced by Lone, but these plans changed: in January 2013 she announced that the first official single from the album would be "Yung Rapunxel", which was released in March 2013 through SoundCloud.


title: Azealia Banks

text: In May 2013, Banks announced that the second single from "Broke with Expensive Taste" would be "ATM Jam", featuring Pharrell. On June 29, she debuted the song at the 2013 Glastonbury Festival, with New York City radio station Hot 97 premiering a clean, shortened version of the studio recording three days later. On July 11, the full studio version of "ATM Jam" was released on BBC Radio 1. Banks confirmed in November 2013 that "ATM Jam" would not appear on "Broke with Expensive Taste" due to negative fan feedback and personal disinterest regarding the song.


title: Azealia Banks

text: Banks announced in mid-July that after a long battle, she had parted ways with Universal Music Group. She reportedly has possession and the rights to the work she released with Interscope. On July 28, 2014, Banks released the official second single from "Broke with Expensive Taste", titled "Heavy Metal and Reflective", on her own label, "Azealia Banks Records".


title: Azealia Banks

text: Banks surprise-released "Broke with Expensive Taste" under Prospect Park on iTunes on November 7, 2014. The physical album was released on March 3, 2015. In 2015, Banks performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and posed nude for the April issue of "Playboy", shot by Ellen von Unwerth. In late 2015, Banks revealed that she was unable to release new music until March 2016, due to the separation from her label, Prospect Park, but as of February 2016 she was officially cleared of her contract and able to release new music.


title: Azealia Banks

text: In February 2016, Banks released the single, "The Big Big Beat", with its official video uploaded to Vevo in April. The song would serve as the lead single to Banks's second mixtape, "Slay-Z", which was released on March 24, 2016. In July 2017, "Slay-Z" was reissued to iTunes, Spotify, and other online music stores under her independent record label, Chaos & Glory Recordings. The re-issue would include the Lunice collaboration, "Crown", which was released as the project's sole bonus track.


title: Azealia Banks

text: In early 2017, Banks launched her online store, CheapyXO. The site features artist merchandise from Banks as well as original skin care products. The site also includes "CheapyXO Radio" which links to a playlist curated by Banks herself. Banks would later relaunch the site in 2020 to include her podcast, "Cheapy's Two Cents", as well as, "Botantica XO", which is composed of spiritual items.