Much of the eastern US is getting slammed with a blizzard today. But in New York, snow coming down is just yet another reason to get out of the apartment and go play in the park. I went out around 3:00 today and recorded two Periscope videos that you can check out if you want. The first of them is of the cityscape starting at 68th and Columbus, walking south along Columbus and Broadway to Columbus Circle, then into Central Park. The second is a shorter look at people out and about on 72nd St. in Central Park. I had so much fun I was … [Read more...]
How Urban Planning Made Motown Records Possible
I'm reading Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss, a book I plan to review for City Journal. But I want to highlight something briefly that really caught my eye about Motown Records. It's no secret Detroit punches above its weight in musical influence, and the Motown sound was clearly a big part of that. Maraniss asks "Why Detroit? What gave this city its unmatched creative melody?" He lays out his theory of the case with regards to Motown Records. The family piano's role in the music that flowed out of the … [Read more...]
Behind the Facade in St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg, Peter the Great's new European style capital for imperial Russia, is the most visited city for tourists in Russia. It has a ton of great buildings, energetic street life in its smallish central core, and world-renowned cultural institutions like the Hermitage Museum and the Mariinsky Theater. As with Moscow, however, I am not going to attempt to replicate what you can find better elsewhere online or in a guidebook. Rather, I want to show a few things that reflect on something a person there told me, namely that "St. … [Read more...]
A Visit to Kazan
St. Petersburg and Moscow are typical destinations in Russia, but if you're looking for other places to visit, where do you go? I can't claim to answer that question as I have not fully surveyed the realm, but I did visit the city of Kazan for a day, so want to share a few observations and photos. Kazan is a city of a bit over a million people about 450 miles east of Moscow (a flight of around 1:20). It's the capital of the Tatar Republic of the Russian Federation. The Tatars were a nomads of Turkish ethnicity who established an independent … [Read more...]
A Manifesto Against Completing Sagrada Família Church
I've written before about Sagrada FamÃlia Church in Barcelona, an architectural masterwork by Antoni GaudÃ. In particular you may remember my essay "Will Sagrada FamÃlia Be Mankind’s Last Ever Great Artistic Statement for God?." I wrote that piece after reading an article by Oscar Tusquets Blanca in Domus magazine in 2011. In it he talked about being an instigator as a student of the publication of a manifesto (his term) against completion of the church. And how he now believes he and his fellow signatories were very mistaken. While … [Read more...]
The Three Ages of Boss Rule
[ Steve Eide is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and also runs its fiscal policy oriented web site Public Sector, Inc.. After seeing Pete Saunders' piece on the three generations of black mayors in America, he sent me the piece below with the same three generations structure, but talking about political boss rule, using Hollywood as a point of departure. It's a great piece I'm delighted to get to share - Aaron. ] Between roughly the Civil War and World War II, most American cities were at some point dominated by a boss and his … [Read more...]
The Three Generations of Black Mayors in America
[ This week is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, so I'll be away and enjoying it for the rest of the week. As a holiday long read for you, I'm posting this very important piece about the three generations of black mayors in America and how the timing of the election of the first black mayor affected the trajectory of those cities, with implications even today. Pete is the best writer on urbanism and race that I know and you can read his writings about this and more on his site Corner Side Yard - Aaron. ] The Monument to Joe Louis, … [Read more...]
Thoughts On My Neighborhood Post-Ferguson
Some folks asked me to comment on Ferguson, MO. I don't have anything to add to the massive amount that has already been written, but it did get me thinking about my own neighborhood and the racial dynamics that exist in America. I live in a mixed race neighborhood on the North Side of Indianapolis called various names, including South of Broad Ripple (SoBro) and Keystone-Monon. It's a racially diverse area, mostly featuring wood frame 2-3br/1-ba worker cottages built around wartime. It's likely always been working class or starter home … [Read more...]
Fixing Corrupt Cities
This is the second installment in my series on corruption. This week I'm taking a look at a book Richard Layman turned me onto. It's called "Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention." Written by Robert Klitgaard with assistance from former La Paz Mayor Rondal Maclean-Abaroa and H. Lindsey Parris, and published under the auspices of the World Bank, this book is a must-read on the topic of corruption even if, sadly, many of the recommendations are not directly applicable to the type of corruption many US cities experience … [Read more...]
Suburbs and Sacred Space
This post originally appeared in New Geography on June 7, 2013. Suburbs are often unfairly maligned as lacking the qualities that make cities great. But one place that criticism can be fair is in the area of sacred space. There most certainly is sacred space in the suburbs, but usually less of it than in the city both quantitatively and qualitatively. In fact, the comparative lack of sacred space is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the suburb that makes it “sub” urban, that is, in a sense lesser than the city. Lewis Mumford … [Read more...]
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