The title tells us the setting: a neighborhood being remade, usually with newer, pricier buildings. The speaker doesn't stand outside this change, though. The opening lines show the "I" dissolving into "us" and then into "all the city," as if the speaker has become part of the glowing, rebuilt place. "Our made light" can be read as electric light, but also as something manufactured, a brightness that people have built rather than found.
The second stanza turns inward and sounds less sure. The speaker finds a "former liberty" while "living in a fine box." The word "box" undercuts "fine": the home looks nice but feels confining. "Day and night" suggests the feeling never lets up. The mood is quiet and uneasy, and the poem seems to hold a mix of belonging and loss. The speaker may be complicit in the change, and the poem leaves that discomfort unresolved rather than offering a verdict.