Sustaining Place

July 4: A Day of Pints and Haircuts

Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, thought I knew she was sleeping.“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why”Counting the cars on the New Jersey…

Have a Think: “A Time of Excitement and Anxiety“

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…

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…

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,…

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.…