When a recognizable meme gets untethered from its usual habitat—its preferred social and cultural context—it’s amazing how quickly people forget what it was intended to signify. That’s exactly the case with this neon sign in a downtown storefront window: Does it ring a bell? Probably not at first blush. But look at the general shape
A recycling station housed in an old factory building might not seem like a novel concept, particularly in a city with a plethora of underutilized or vacant industrial space. Like Detroit. And even the appearance of it—a pastiche of industrial chic, street artistry, found objects, and, yes, even a pretty extensive panoply of bins of
In the world’s most overbuilt nation for retail space, any outside influence can induce an infinitesimal change that nonetheless completely transforms the landscape for commerce. The retailers who continue to succeed in this economy—particularly impressive given the growing portent of online shopping’s eventual dominance—help shed light on what type of structures/milieus they are seeking to
Late last year I featured an article on the unusual Oxford Valley Mall in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a mostly upper-middle income suburban region of Philadelphia. It’s a distinctive mall because it’s simultaneously both low-rent and affluent: it has such high-end tenants as Williams Sonoma or Swarovski, but it also has Five Below, Dollar Hut, and
I’ve gotten in the habit of dropping the word “meme” into blog articles as though it has become a part of common parlance. (Come to think of it, I probably overuse “parlance” too.) The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “meme” is that it is “an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one
While I continue to sift through articles and scholarship on neighborhood associations in my free time, I’ve come to realize I’ve let the posts lag a bit too much. So I offer a quick rumination on a topic I love but haven’t featured much: license plates. Some states doggedly adhere to a certain design over
I’ve referred several times in the past to a labelscar without acknowledging that the term is hardly part of everyday idiom. A popular retail website/blog might share the name, but that doesn’t mean it has more than niche appeal. But it also isn’t particularly tough to figure out. It usually involves little more than the
“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.” ~Charles Kuralt The federal government might have decommissioned U.S. Route 66 twenty-five years ago, but you don’t have to be middle-aged to recognize the name, or even to appreciate it. In fact, the Mother Road seems
It is easy to attribute The Great Recession to the increasingly visible decision among many states to cut long-standing social services. In a good portion of the country, publicly supported interstate rest areas have lost much of their reason for being; with so many other options at the exit ramps along our many limited-access highways,
It should come as no surprise that a prolonged period of economic doldrums often fosters a collective hesitation. We’ve witnessed it for the past year with the sharp retreat of consumer spending coupled with job losses, in which the cause-effect nexus is just about as chicken-and-egg of a phenomenon as we’ll hopefully ever see. But
When a recognizable meme gets untethered from its usual habitat—its preferred social and cultural context—it’s amazing how quickly people forget what it was intended to signify. That’s exactly the case with this neon
A recycling station housed in an old factory building might not seem like a novel concept, particularly in a city with a plethora of underutilized or vacant industrial space. Like Detroit. And even
In the world’s most overbuilt nation for retail space, any outside influence can induce an infinitesimal change that nonetheless completely transforms the landscape for commerce. The retailers who continue to succeed in this
Late last year I featured an article on the unusual Oxford Valley Mall in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a mostly upper-middle income suburban region of Philadelphia. It’s a distinctive mall because it’s simultaneously both
I’ve gotten in the habit of dropping the word “meme” into blog articles as though it has become a part of common parlance. (Come to think of it, I probably overuse “parlance” too.)
While I continue to sift through articles and scholarship on neighborhood associations in my free time, I’ve come to realize I’ve let the posts lag a bit too much. So I offer a
I’ve referred several times in the past to a labelscar without acknowledging that the term is hardly part of everyday idiom. A popular retail website/blog might share the name, but that doesn’t mean
“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.” ~Charles Kuralt The federal government might have decommissioned U.S. Route 66 twenty-five years ago,
It is easy to attribute The Great Recession to the increasingly visible decision among many states to cut long-standing social services. In a good portion of the country, publicly supported interstate rest areas
It should come as no surprise that a prolonged period of economic doldrums often fosters a collective hesitation. We’ve witnessed it for the past year with the sharp retreat of consumer spending coupled
