It’s been almost two years exactly since I featured various metal rods, rings, and ridges carefully positioned at select locations in various parks and civic plazas in Oakland and San Francisco. Aside from alliteration, these rods, rings, and ridges shared one ambition: to prevent people from engaging in certain undesirable activities at these public gathering
I can’t exactly claim to belong to some sort of refined or elite contingent when I say I’m a big fan of small, old, and neglected cemeteries; lots of people think these relics are pretty cool. But I try my best to at least document them when I stumble across them, elevating my interest to
I will be overseas a fair part of this month, and I at least wanted to crank out one brief article before I leave. While this article might, at first blush, seem to come out of nowhere, it bears a direct spatial resemblance to one I wrote just a few weeks ago: on a row
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” This line from Wizard of Oz (the 1939 movie, not the Frank E. Baum book) has ascended to such currency that’s it’s essentially a catchphrase. And those who use it, from age five to eighty-five, often forget the full connotation to its original function. Sure, it
Take a look at the eyesore there in the center-left of the photo, there with the “FOR LEASE” sign draped across the third floor. Such a humble, ugly little building…and what a contrast to everything else around it! I first explored this derelict structure over five years ago, in the terminally transitional Columbia Heights neighborhood
The fencing that line both sides of Interstate 70 in western Colorado may lack the iconic character of those creosote-lined barriers that flank the highways surrounding Lexington, Kentucky’s horse country. The green of those rolling Appalachian hillsides offers a critical backdrop to the black-as-pitch (literally!) wood that lends structure to the fences in the Bluegrass
With this article I’m presenting my second feature on crime prevention strategies in less than a month. This isn’t typical. But then, the sort of criminality urban America has countenanced these last few years hasn’t been typical either, though it’s rapidly becoming so. Given the double-digit year-to-year increases in violent and property crime, let alone
As evidence mounts that the prime child-raising generations at the moment seem to prefer raising pets over children, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of residential developments host dog parks as a predictable amenity. I’ve covered the topic numerous times before: from a forest clearing in a tucked away corner of
Two and a half years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have at long last reached a point where, even if the public health concerns have not yet dissipated, the public will for restrictions is all but completely absent. The CDC, WHO, and FDA may still issue occasional alerts and updates, but the thunk of
It’s rare that an article assumes an urban activist position that gets my dander up at all, let alone one that prompts me to comment directly on the article. But that’s what I had to do a few weeks ago when Planetizen used the neologism (at least to me) “defensive urbanism” to impugn the modern
It’s been almost two years exactly since I featured various metal rods, rings, and ridges carefully positioned at select locations in various parks and civic plazas in Oakland and San Francisco. Aside from
I can’t exactly claim to belong to some sort of refined or elite contingent when I say I’m a big fan of small, old, and neglected cemeteries; lots of people think these relics
I will be overseas a fair part of this month, and I at least wanted to crank out one brief article before I leave. While this article might, at first blush, seem to
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” This line from Wizard of Oz (the 1939 movie, not the Frank E. Baum book) has ascended to such currency that’s it’s essentially a
Take a look at the eyesore there in the center-left of the photo, there with the “FOR LEASE” sign draped across the third floor. Such a humble, ugly little building…and what a contrast
The fencing that line both sides of Interstate 70 in western Colorado may lack the iconic character of those creosote-lined barriers that flank the highways surrounding Lexington, Kentucky’s horse country. The green of
With this article I’m presenting my second feature on crime prevention strategies in less than a month. This isn’t typical. But then, the sort of criminality urban America has countenanced these last few
As evidence mounts that the prime child-raising generations at the moment seem to prefer raising pets over children, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of residential developments host dog
Two and a half years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have at long last reached a point where, even if the public health concerns have not yet dissipated, the public will for
It’s rare that an article assumes an urban activist position that gets my dander up at all, let alone one that prompts me to comment directly on the article. But that’s what I