Welcome back after my recent writing hiatus. For the last two months, I’ve been finalizing the proofs for Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character with the publisher, as well as heavily enmeshed in moving house to a listed property dating to the 16th century and re-addressing COVID-19 lockdown themes (discussed […]
My third book, Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Principles and Best Practices (with Tigran Haas), will be released by early 2021 and is available for pre-order from Rowman & Littlefield, AmazonUS, AmazonUK, Barnes and Noble, and legacy bookstores worldwide. The essays and photographs exhibited on this website are a […]
Just for a moment, return with me to just a few months ago. Most everywhere, the need for urban retrofits and recalibration to avoid disease spread was already challenging enough. Then, of course, came civil unrest in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, and more; coronovirus was joined by the urban impacts […]
For many years, I’ve stressed the importance of the urbanism of experience, finding layered examples that show how people relate to the built and sociocultural communities around them. This exercise is not merely academic, but is also useful as a supplement to today’s urbanist dialogue and placemaking efforts. In Novenber, […]
If anyone doubted how concerns for public safety and associated protective rules guide human behavior, take a look at the seating configurations depicted above. In my mind, I hear Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and other inheritors of William H. Whyte’s legacy. “I told you so,” they say, as public spaces contextually […]
The essays and photographs exhibited on this website are a serialized prequel to Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character: Principles and Best Practices (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020/21). You may recall the excerpt from the book’s Introduction, featured on July 8, as well as references to the book’s general approach in […]
I keep writing about cities and towns and the need to fully understand urban perspective, and tell a tale below to explain why. I use a photograph and musical “assists” to show what might be already obvious to some: We interpret the city depending upon our experience and orientation. This […]
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 […]
