Sustaining Place

Amid Protest: Simple Community, on Display

People blend with their surroundings in cities. Today, in our dual pandemic world of disease and social justice (including a new tragedy in Atlanta), we…

Of Monuments, Messages, and Change

Over the past several years, I have often posted a photograph and used it as a prompt for reflection. In Seeing the Better City, I…

Today in the City, Survival Means Transition

Pandemic or not, we tend to talk only about what we see, even though we instinctively know that things are not always what they seem.…

Place-Return, Evolving

Here in the United Kingdom, things are waking up again, with many pandemic-based recalibrations advancing to new venues. Things are much the same as before,…

Of Landscape and Hope

In Newbury, England today, the High Street landscape shows the early easing of lockdown, surrounded by a framing sky. Such views can transcend the frantic…

Place-Healing and the Role of Adaptation

How to manage disruptive daily news that impacts our sense of well-being, highlights social disparity, or recalls the fragile balance between health and economy? As…

Next Comes Place-Healing

During these all-too strange days of pandemic and protest, it is hard to say something someone has not said already, or to express outrage in…

The Recalibration Paradox: ‘Nevermore’?

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…” Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven,” 1845 Here, during London’s lockdown, we’ve seen many ravens.…

On LEARNing the City

In the latest issue of The Journal of Public Space, I had the fortunate opportunity to summarize Fulbright work in Australia almost two years ago…

Simple Pandemic Navigation: Now, With Ideas From Then

In March 2010, when urbanist bloggers were few and twitter was in its infancy, I wandered my then-neighborhood in Seattle and wrote about some easy…