In European countries emerging from lockdown, life in quarantine has mostly passed. We have moved to lives in emergence, a daily diary of risk assessment, advisories, and air bridges. Overtourism, at least for now, has returned to mere tourism, spiced by sanitizer, HEPA filters, and masks. Instagram and Facebook will […]
From the outset, defining the culture and character of a city is a daunting task. It involves storytelling and study, from within and without; it draws on art and science, religion and myth. It encompasses expectations, fantasy, and reality. Every individual has a different viewpoint based on his or her […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 see just what protest looks like against urban landscapes. The systemic injustice on display is both disheartening and tragic, through whichever lens we select to […]
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 encouraged this approach as a helpful way to spur meaningful discussions about urban land use disputes, particularly in American cities. In my pending book, I […]
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. We often divide the new and old, without imagining how the two might blend. But now is an enlightening time for long-term stories of adaptation, […]
