Category Archives: Observations

Place Parts, Episode 2: Place, Time, and Ideas


Welcome back to Place Parts, Episode 2, a short video feature in anticipation of the release of my third book, Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Principles and Best Practices, available very shortly in the United States, and eventually, around the world.  Last time, in Place Parts, Episode 1, we talked […]

Place Parts, Episode 1: A Sustaining Place Companion


Welcome to Place Parts, Episode 1, a short video feature in anticipation of the release of my third book, Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Principles and Best Practices, available very shortly in the United States, and eventually, around the world.  Place Parts goes beyond two-dimensional blogging and will appear at […]

Sustaining Community in Pandemica


Let’s talk about the hyperlocal places of Pandemica, where the successes of sustaining community may live or die. They are on my mind this New Year’s Day, after a long walk in West Berkshire. I saw many local instances of non-compliance with England’s Tier 4 COVID-19 guidelines. I considered the […]

Photo of the Year: We Are Still Open


I took a photo yesterday that explains the year. It’s about adaptation, and, ultimately, survival. It also addresses another dilemma: depending on the context of a place, or my mindset at different times, I find it hard to have confidence in what I see. I need the back story, which […]

Almost Here for the Holidays: A Book to Sustain Places


Welcome back after my recent writing hiatus. For the last two months, I’ve been finalizing the proofs for Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character with the publisher, as well as heavily enmeshed in moving house to a listed property dating to the 16th century and re-addressing COVID-19 lockdown themes (discussed […]

Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Deep Dive


My third book, Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Principles and Best Practices (with Tigran Haas), will be released by early 2021 and is available for pre-order from Rowman & Littlefield, AmazonUS, AmazonUK, Barnes and Noble, and legacy bookstores worldwide. The essays and photographs exhibited on this website are a […]

‘Place-Healing’ Revisited


Just for a moment, return with me to just a few months ago. Most everywhere, the need for urban retrofits and recalibration to avoid disease spread was already challenging enough. Then, of course, came civil unrest in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, and more; coronovirus was joined by the urban impacts […]

Watering Can as Symbol: Sustenance in a Sustainable Place


In these times, is it an outright elitist thing to run around with a Leica M-10P waxing poetic about how how to sustain the culture and character of a place? Maybe not, if the exercise continues to reveal simple truths about important things, and provides an easy, visual reference to […]

Forgetting to Remember


Back in the day, people complied with signage that facilitated social distancing. Increasingly, they forget to remember. Meanwhile, a random fact: today, the United Kingdom reported the highest number of new coronavirus cases since May 30. Here we go again, perhaps? We’ll see.