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why urban history matters
Going forward, let’s not discount the influence of history’s recurring themes in how we redevelop the urban realm. So many discussions about cities today look only forward, without fully considering...
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choosing place-receiving over placemaking, and why
A footnote to the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter In 1997, I returned to Europe after a long absence. My Paris photograph, above, jump-started a then-dormant fascination with the...
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capturing underlying patterns of urban street design
Have you ever wondered why some places seem built for automobiles as opposed to humans? In a recent study, J. Alexander Maxwell and fellow researchers from the University of Strathclyde’s Urban Design...
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why do we write about cities?
When we write about cities, sometimes we do best when we take the metrics away. In 2011, amid a visit to San Francisco and just back from Africa, I offered some thoughts about why we write about...
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timeless or time-bound in the city?
Take away context clues, and cities become more interesting matrices—with blank cells to complete—where each of us personalizes how space meets time. A uniform filter applied to multiple urban scenes...
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On Saturday, September 13, the 2014 multi-day (and always provocative) Seattle Design Festival features a “Public Space in Motion” panel. Here, almost live from France, is the panel’s opening...
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‘inevitably urban’ and the role of the people
Inevitable Urban Times These times seem so inevitably urban. Of course, my wry remark comes from a city-dweller in a post-recessionary Seattle, where new construction appears at every turn. Here,...
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why the ‘finesse of the avenue’ is what cities need
Fourth in an illustrated series about place-decoding from the South of France. The Finesse of the Avenue Last month in Cassis, the Avenue Victor Hugo told the stories surrounding its pavement and...
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the once and future street, and how it defines us
A week’s residency in Glasgow, Scotland returns a 2011 essay to the forefront, and its message: In the post-freeway world, recall the important, organic landscape of neighborhood, towers and spires,...
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using ‘plot-based urbanism’ to reclaim the basic unit of the city
Background In recent years, urbanists have decried suburban developments on large greenfield properties in favor of a return to diverse, close grain urban fabrics. This granular form of development...
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from village to city, we are what we throw away
We clothe our discarded items in different forms and colors, but our built environments always have small places and features devoted to what we throw away. This observation is nothing profoundly new,...
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urban edges, and how to define the spaces beyond
In the city, we blend the familiar with the edge of the unknown. I doubt that before today, any urbanist writer has used an old, Latin term that lives on in southern Italy, to explain the particular...
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how to think about access in evolving Seattle
Questions and answers about accessing cities and neighborhoods once spoke the language of exit ramps, street widening and parking adequacy. Now, different conversations, and varied imagery, create...
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using urban universals to frame city life
The two photographs below say both simple and remarkable things about how urban residents interact with each other, and the streets around them. Neither photograph is more superior or more insightful....
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how Times Square inspires the urbanist ‘little engines that could’
Last week, Island Press Field Notes featured a perspective from several Island Press authors on why Times Square should remain a pedestrian plaza. I was honored to take part, and I wrote the...
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