The remarkable, resilient city of Hoboken, New Jersey is worthy of blog posts far longer than this one, and someday I will give it justice. But it’s time to start with a snapshot, evoking one of this densely populated burg’s most cherished cultural artifacts. Not surprisingly, the city, directly across the Hudson River from New
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a meta-post (blogging about my own blogging), but I’m due for one this time around. Back in May, I blogged about the Brass Mill Center, a very suburban-styled mall in the heart of Waterbury, Connecticut’s inner city. I’m generally happy with how the article turned out, but most of
If there’s any question at this point whether the shopping conventions of the 1970s and 1980s are still viable, all you need is to type “dead” followed by the desired retail type into your preferred search engine, and let it do its thing. Suburban mall, downtown mall, strip mall, lifestyle center, factory outlet, plaza. You
Sometimes the most well-intentioned and carefully planned initiatives still yield unexpected and undesirable results. I deliberately didn’t put too much thought into the above sentence; I wanted it to emerge as spontaneously and organically as possible, then to judge it afterward. In hindsight, I would only change one word: sometimes. Replace it with “usually”. (But
Considering that our landscapes are replete with signifiers, why is it that we typically only notice the big, garish ones? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon—or a semiotician—to answer that question: big symbols tend to dwarf little ones, so they nearly always get an upper hand in their ability to convey a message. If this
The remarkable, resilient city of Hoboken, New Jersey is worthy of blog posts far longer than this one, and someday I will give it justice. But it’s time to start with a snapshot,
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a meta-post (blogging about my own blogging), but I’m due for one this time around. Back in May, I blogged about the Brass Mill Center, a very
If there’s any question at this point whether the shopping conventions of the 1970s and 1980s are still viable, all you need is to type “dead” followed by the desired retail type into
Sometimes the most well-intentioned and carefully planned initiatives still yield unexpected and undesirable results. I deliberately didn’t put too much thought into the above sentence; I wanted it to emerge as spontaneously and
Considering that our landscapes are replete with signifiers, why is it that we typically only notice the big, garish ones? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon—or a semiotician—to answer that question: big symbols