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 […]
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 […]
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 forms of therapy, how do we adapt to the unaccustomed extremes of 2020 thus far? Our answers will vary; recently, I have tried to share […]
In March 2010, when urbanist bloggers were few and twitter was in its infancy, I wandered my then-neighborhood in Seattle and wrote about some easy fixes that would help bring the city out of the recession. Ten years later, amid post-pandemic prophecies about how cities might address public safety, transportation, […]
