My Bookmarks
Nicetown
Places Journal
For decades a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia has struggled to repair the damages inflicted by postwar urban renewal projects.
Directions
Places Journal
Giving and getting directions is an unsung ritual of civic life, a measure of local knowledge and belonging. But what happens when your neighborhood, your city, seem to have lost their way?
Larimer and Orphan
Places Journal
Larimer Avenue at Orphan Street is not a postindustrial catastrophe. Just a corner that people have left alone for a long time.
Tent City, America
Places Journal
Tent cities are now so common that advocates are campaigning to make them semi-permanent settlements of micro-housing. But is this a genuine solution or a cheap fix?
Both Sides of Sunset
Places Journal
City of sprawl, city of neighborhoods. City of wealth and poverty, celebrity and anonymity. Los Angeles requires us to peer beneath the surface.
Queer Old Things
Places Journal
In Paris in the mid 20th century there emerged a zone of queer space — a lesbian archipelago on the Left Bank that was both novel and ostentatiously radical.
Good Night
Places Journal
Dazzling innovations in urban lighting design and technology are inspiring new ways of thinking about the city at night.
A Tower in Manhattan
Places Journal
On living in a high-rise near Central Park in the ‘70s, back when the city was less rich and more open.
Dallas Is a Story I Tell
Places Journal
Memories of growing up in Dallas in the 1960s. When JFK was assassinated, the shared national tragedy blurred with the personal and ordinary.
Hating Bourbon Street
Places Journal
A geographer upbraids the Bourbon Street haters and scrutinizes the politics of authenticity in New Orleans.
Resilience in Red Hook
Places Journal
New York’s chief urban designer describes the frightening onset and complicated aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, from the vantage of his home.
Expect Everything
Places Journal
Los Angeles has been so heavily mythologized — as paradise or dystopia, or both — that it can be difficult to resolve the idea of L.A. with its actual presence.
Motor City Breakdown
Places Journal
A sweeping review of Detroit’s portrayal in recent books and films.
My Beautiful City
Places Journal
A story about Austin then and now, and a heartbreak of a house commission.
The Emergence of Container Urbanism
Places Journal
The repurposed shipping container, now a fixture of urban architecture, is part of a movement that can be traced back to Archigram and the Metabolists in the 1960s.
Detroit, As Is
Places Journal
Photographs of Detroit that show the city in the present tense — not a symbol of decline, but a place where people live.
The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit
Places Journal
What if Detroit has become a new sort of urban formation that only appears depleted through the lens of conventional urbanism?
Little Libraries in the Urban Margins
Places Journal
One of the most promising dimensions of tactical urbanism is the rise of pop-up, guerrilla, and ad-hoc libraries.