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
There was probably a point in history when virtually every American had heard of Cumberland, Maryland. Not only that, it’s reasonable to surmise that a significant proportion of Americans had passed through it. Aside from the fact that, for most of Maryland’s history, it was the state’s second largest city (its “Queen City” behind Lord/King
It’s uncommon that I feature an article where I strive to keep the location mostly or completely anonymous. After all, that “sense of place” is often a critical feature, and it’s one of the primary ways I organize/classify them: by major city, by state, and (in rare instances) by country. Only one example comes to
Several weeks ago I noted what I believe is a misbegotten campaign loosely branded “hostile design”, which seeks to galvanize criticism toward the now-ubiquitous effort of preventing people from getting too comfortable in shared public spaces—so comfortable it constitutes (in some people’s option) outright abuse of that shared civic trust. We’ve all seen examples: carefully
The US earns its reputation for encouraging urban auto dependency, largely by eschewing any good provisions for pedestrians and reducing far too many of its streetscapes to vehicular sewers. Nonetheless, now and then we can come across some remarkable little pedestrian provision that surprises us. And it doesn’t have to be in a historically pedestrian
Surely I’m not the only one who remembers learning about the tragic story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius onto the ill-fated Roman city of Pompeii in 79 AD. I think it’s something many of us in the Midwest learned even in elementary school. Our teachers described to us, in vivid detail, how it all
As a successor to my post on a bumper sticker bedecked guardrail in Wilmington, I offer a second example of what I must at least partly attribute to meme culture, for which the World Wide Web exerted little to no influence. This second example of memetic behavior that is anti-digital is probably a bit more
Every industry has its own mini-lexicon. Why shouldn’t it? These neologisms might originate from journalism, where they achieve enough prevalence to become mainstream: e.g., the press’s notably unecological use of the word “ecosystem”, the cringe-inducing phrase that begins “help me unpack…”, or the use of “ask” as a noun. The US Department of Defense has
The primary photo in this article features a landmark that is widely known to people in the greater Washington DC area, particularly those on the Virginia side of the river. But it isn’t significant or important enough to have any clout nationally or even outside the region. It’s a visual landmark in the sense that
I rarely begin an article with a question—my goal is to end each rumination with more questions than I offer at the beginning—but this time I’m not going to hesitate. Why did the churches of yesteryear place cemeteries in the yards right next door? And what made them stop? Perhaps I feel more confident in
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
There was probably a point in history when virtually every American had heard of Cumberland, Maryland. Not only that, it’s reasonable to surmise that a significant proportion of Americans had passed through it.
It’s uncommon that I feature an article where I strive to keep the location mostly or completely anonymous. After all, that “sense of place” is often a critical feature, and it’s one of
Several weeks ago I noted what I believe is a misbegotten campaign loosely branded “hostile design”, which seeks to galvanize criticism toward the now-ubiquitous effort of preventing people from getting too comfortable in
The US earns its reputation for encouraging urban auto dependency, largely by eschewing any good provisions for pedestrians and reducing far too many of its streetscapes to vehicular sewers. Nonetheless, now and then
Surely I’m not the only one who remembers learning about the tragic story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius onto the ill-fated Roman city of Pompeii in 79 AD. I think it’s something
As a successor to my post on a bumper sticker bedecked guardrail in Wilmington, I offer a second example of what I must at least partly attribute to meme culture, for which the
Every industry has its own mini-lexicon. Why shouldn’t it? These neologisms might originate from journalism, where they achieve enough prevalence to become mainstream: e.g., the press’s notably unecological use of the word “ecosystem”,
The primary photo in this article features a landmark that is widely known to people in the greater Washington DC area, particularly those on the Virginia side of the river. But it isn’t
I rarely begin an article with a question—my goal is to end each rumination with more questions than I offer at the beginning—but this time I’m not going to hesitate. Why did the