A phrase used on BBC News at 2:00 today is my newly adopted mantra: “A Time of Excitement and Anxiety.” I’ve adopted it as a fair summary of the balance between public health and the economy. It’s also an example of where I’ve been stuck in my head for over […]
I’m not sure whether malls are places where viruses thrive, but they seem like they could be the cruise ships of retail for all of their enclosed spaces and recycled air. At least that’s what I was first thinking in Kingston today when I picked up a keyboard at the […]
Before Pandemica, the universal city that I introduced here a few days ago, there was the Roman military camp, the castrum, and its constituent crossroads (the decumanus and the cardo). In my original blog, myurbanist, I wrote about the precedential role of the castrum, and how, especially in Europe, the contextual […]
For many, the pandemic has been a catalyst to compare the urban life that was to what it now seems to be. Yet, that is not an easy task, because in a world of moving targets, balancing priorities, and mixed messages of fact and emotion, each day’s news has a […]
We all live in the city of Pandemica. With apologies to Italo Calvino, it is time to reconsider a current “road closed” image of historic Church Street in Twickenham (retitled Equity Street in Pandemica for just a moment). The setting on display may be symbolic of a return to the […]
Ten years ago, I wrote a short, inspirational piece about hill towns. Yesterday, as I regarded the still-noticeable configuration of Richmond upon Thames–rising up to the spire of St Matthias Church–the “hill town nuance” once again reminded me of past urban forms that responded to the particular forces influencing human […]
In Urbanism Without Effort, I wrote that storefronts have always made the city. One reason is the messages they communicate, which is why blank walls that say nothing can make for an unpopular urban place. Storefronts and window displays during the pandemic are no exception. On Hill Street in Richmond […]
In England, a simple urban view is a regular contrast to the views that I saw while growing up. The latter showed a built environment no older than I am now. Here, there is comfort in contrast, because, as I have been writing over the past month, I can see […]
In mid-May, I began Sustaining Place with an explanation of why and how to document emergence from lockdown in May and June. From a London perspective, I have been loyal to that task over the last month, and alluded to the uneven impacts of the pandemic across the world. Even […]
