An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Urban Culture, Space, Architecture, and Design
Back in November 2011 I wrote a review of Chad Friedrichs’ film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. I’m prompted to revisit the subject because of a very nice analysis of the film by Ray Gindroz that recently appeared in Better! Cities and Towns. […]
I came across this video by Joerg Niggli while checking in on Kaid Benfield’s blog, who had come across it while checking in on The Urbanophile. It’s called “Venice in A Day”: I’ve visited Venice before, as part of a […]
One of my favorite anthropologists is the Norwegian Thomas Hylland Eriksen. His book Engaging Anthropology was a big hit in my senior capstone seminar on public anthropology. I recently came across his essay “Diversity versus Difference: Neoliberalism in the Minority […]
One of the delights of being in Bologna recently was meeting, courtesy of my colleague Gabriele Manella, other scholars doing urban research in the University of Bologna’s Sociology Department. I’m honored for our anthropology department here at DU to be […]
We’re still skeptical, but Archinect has the report and some pretty good pictures and drawings here.
I’m just back from the “Contours of The City Conference” in Bologna, organized by the University of Bologna’s Laboratorio di Ricerca Sulle Città. It was all good: terrific hosts, stimulating company, an elegant meeting venue, and great cuisine. The conference […]
I use the concept of cosmopolis in Leonie Sandercock’s sense, referring to a city that’s developed in ways sensitive to cultural diversity and its wider societal benefits (e.g., enhanced vitality and creativity). In a recent post I noted that the sessions […]
My title, and especially the concept of a “Just Aesthetic”, is attributable to Alaka Wali, Curator of North American Anthropology and Director of Applied Cultural Research in the Environment, Culture and Conservation Division at Chicago’s Field Museum. Yesterday Dr. Wali spoke at the […]
In three weeks time I’ll be headed to Bologna, Italy to participate in an international conference on the City sponsored by the University of Bologna’s Laboratorio di Ricerca sulle Città (Laboratory for Research on the City). The laboratory was co-founded […]
Or, help kill him? So asks Planetizen, in advertising an article by Robert Steuteville in Better! Cities and Towns. Steuteville’s argument is that gated communities like The Retreat at Twin Lakes create “a fortress mentality” replete with paranoia and suspicion […]
Yesterday’s Atlantic Wire listed MIT Urban Planner Eran Ben-Joseph’s column in The New York Times called “When a Parking Lot is so Much More” as a top Monday read. The essence of Ben-Joseph’s argument: The ubiquity of parking lots has…led […]
As long as we’re revisiting topics from last August we can’t ignore last week’s big news that the BMW-Guggenheim Lab won’t be opening this coming May in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Local activists mounted a vigorous campaign to stop the […]