Sustaining Place

About the Gathering Spaces of Malls in Pandemica

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…

Guess What? We Will Always Write About Cities

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…

Exploring the Sense-Based City of Change

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…

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…

The Rail Bridge

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…