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Demystified Tokyo Offers an Alternative Paradigm of Urban Planning—A Review of “Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City” – The Metropole
Almazán, Jorge and Studiolab. Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City. Novato, CA: ORO Editions, 2022. Reviewed by Eric Häusler Emergent Tokyo is the result of the collaborative effort of Studiolab, an architecture studio at Keio University that combines interdisciplinary research with socially conscious architectural practice. Emergent Tokyo’s authors argue that Tokyo is a vibrant and…
A River Runs Through It: The Anacostia and Residential Displacement in Postwar Southeast DC – The Metropole
Editor’s note: This month we are featuring work by historians that extend Beyond the Urban. This is our third post in the series. by S.D. Hodell There are two main waterways in the Washington, DC, metro area: the Potomac and the Anacostia. The two rivers are a study in contrasts. The Potomac separates Maryland and…
Suburban, Conservative, and Latino: A Transnational Story from Chicagolandia – The Metropole
Editor’s note: This month we are featuring work by historians that extend Beyond the Urban. This is our second post in the series. by Antonio Ramirez My community college students and I have been documenting the history of Latinx people in Chicago’s suburbs since 2015. We call these sprawling, Latino-dense communities on the outskirts of…
How to Study the “Village Virus”: Sinclair Lewis and the Small-Town Science of Yearning – The Metropole
Editor's note: This month we are featuring work by historians that extend Beyond the Urban. This is our first post in the series. by Vincent Femia It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to be respectable. It is contentment…the contentment of…
The Metropole Bookshelf: Stephen Robertson Discusses “Harlem in Disorder” – The Metropole
The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. by Stephen Robertson I was not intending to write Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935 when my University of Sydney colleagues…
The Metropole Bookshelf: Jacek Blaszkiewicz and “Fanfare for a City” – The Metropole
by Jacek Blaszkiewicz My new book, Fanfare for a City: Music and the Urban Imagination in Haussmann’s Paris, begins and ends with boulevard inaugurations. I don’t mean inaugurations taking place on boulevards, but the rather quasi-spiritual consecrations of the roads themselves. As a historical musicologist, I wanted to write about the soundscapes of these events:…
Jobs Jobs Jobs – The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board – The Metropole
It's no secret that the job market for Americanist historians of the twentieth century in academia is somewhere between a tire fire and hot garbage ablaze on a random barge floating across the ocean. While The Metropole is not a jobs board, it doesn't hurt to shine a light on lesser known, but very good,…
A Struggle for Self-Reliance: A Brief History of Community Plans in Barrio Logan, 1978-2023 – The Metropole
Editor’s note: In anticipation of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History’s (SACRPH) 2024 conference to be held in San Diego on the campus of the University of California San Diego, The Metropole’s theme for February is San Diego. This is the final entry. For more information about SACRPH 2024, see here. For…
San Diego’s South Bay Annexation of 1957: Water Insecurity, Territorial Expansion, and the Making of a US-Mexico Border City – The Metropole
Editor's note: In anticipation of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History's (SACRPH) 2024 conference to be held in San Diego on the campus of the University of California San Diego, The Metropole's theme for February is San Diego. This is the third of four entries for the month. For more information about…
Revitalizing Cities Beyond the Center—A Review of “A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945” – The Metropole
Rose, Mark H. and Roger Biles. A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2022. Reviewed by David Goodwin As public concern over the COVID-19 pandemic shifts from a guiding fear to a collective memory, American urban centers struggle to reimagine and restructure themselves to an…
San Diego—A Green(er) City: Six Decades of Environmental Activism in a Biodiversity Hotspot – The Metropole
By Andrew Wiese Editor's note: In anticipation of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History's (SACRPH) 2024 conference to be held in San Diego on the campus of the University of California San Diego, The Metropole's theme for February is San Diego. This is the second of four entries for the month. For…
America’s Finest City? An Overview & Bibliography of San Diego – The Metropole
Editor's note: In anticipation of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History's (SACRPH) 2024 conference to be held in San Diego on the campus of the University of California San Diego, The Metropole's theme for February is San Diego. This is the first of four entries for the month. For more information about…
Heroin and Chocolate City: Black Community Responses to Drug Addiction in the Nation’s Capital, 1967-1973 – The Metropole
By Ryan Reft “The cost to the community of drug-related crime is staggering,” Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of General Sessions Harold H. Greene asserted to the United States Senate in June of 1970. Accepting more “conservative estimates,” Greene suggested that 10,000 addicts resided in the District of Columbia, spending “$40 to…
The Metropole Bookshelf: Becky Nicolaides and “The New Suburbia” – The Metropole
The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Becky Nicolaides The seed for my book The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2024) was planted years…
Interstate Lovesong: How Popular and Official Narratives Have Obscured the Damaging Impact of the Interstate Highway System – The Metropole
By Ryan Reft Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has decried the racist history of the US Interstate Highway System, which obliterated many thriving Black and Brown communities. And earlier this year, Buttigieg announced new efforts at the US Department of Transportation to address that problematic legacy, dedicating $1 billion to “reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated…
Fifty Years of Home Rule in Washington, DC – The Metropole
“Self-government died early in the District,” note historians Christopher Asch and G. Derek Musgrove. “Not even a generation after Americans went to war to protest ‘no taxation without representation,’ Congress stripped Washingtonians of democracy’s basic unit of currency, the right to vote.”[1] As they demonstrate in their 2017 work Chocolate City: A History of Race…
The Metropole Editors’ Favorites 2023: Urban Experiences – The Metropole
Another year is coming to a close, and here at The Metropole, we editors are once again sharing some recommendations for things to read, listen to, view, or experience in your “off” time in the coming year. This installment: our favorite experiences in cities this year and some accessories that will help you on urban…
The Metropole Editors’ Favorites 2023: Books & Podcasts – The Metropole
Another year is coming to a close, and here at The Metropole, we editors are once again sharing some recommendations for things to read, listen to, view, or experience in your “off” time in the coming year. First up: the books and podcasts that made us think and feel (and a bonus music recommendation). Books…
The Metropole Editors’ Favorites 2023: Film & Television – The Metropole
Another year is coming to a close, and here at The Metropole, we editors are once again sharing some recommendations for things to read, listen to, view, or experience in your “off” time in the coming year. This installment: the movies and television shows that we think should go on a “must watch” list. Movies…
Local Logics and Urban Exorcisms for Better Neighborhoods—A Review of “Urban Specters: The Everyday Harm of Racial Capitalism” – The Metropole
Mayorga, Sarah. Urban Specters: The Everyday Harm of Racial Capitalism. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Reviewed by Minh Q. Nguyen Sarah Mayorga’s Urban Specters: The Everyday Harms of Racial Capitalism provides an in-depth analysis of material life within two neighborhoods in Cincinnati, a Midwestern Rust Belt city, from the perspective of…
“Who’s Going to Own Adams Morgan?” The Battle Against “Reverse Blockbusting” in 1970s Washington, DC – The Metropole
This is the fourth entry in our Metropolis of the Month for November 2023, Washington, DC. By Timothy Kumfer Standing on the sidewalk with a loudspeaker, Walter Pierce addressed the crowd assembled on the 1700 block of Willard Street, NW. “We’re here today to make clear to the rest of the real estate vultures and…
Hope and Community in the Capital: Salvadorans in the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Area – The Metropole
This is the third entry for our November 2023 Metropolis of the Month, Washington, DC. By Edwin A. Rodriguez In an interview with news media outlet Bloomberg, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson reflected on his book Green Earth (2015), inspired by his time living in Washington, DC. He noted that when he lived in…
The Travails of Urban Redevelopment in post-1968 Washington, DC – The Metropole
This is the second entry in our Metropolis of the Month for November 2023, Washington D.C. By Kyla Sommers In response to the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, African Americans took to the streets in more than one hundred American cities. The rebellions in Washington, DC, resulted in…
UHA 2023 Pittsburgh, the Past; UHA 2025 Los Angeles, the Future – The Metropole
Over the long weekend of October 26-29, urban historians gathered in Pittsburgh for the 10th biennial Urban History Association conference. The first UHA gathering since the pandemic, it was a resounding success, as evidenced by some of the tweets below. Special thanks to the planning arrangements committee, UHA President Joe Trotter, and UHA Executive Director…
Dream City Skepticism? A 20th-Century Bibliography of the Nation’s Capital – The Metropole
This is the first post in our Metropolis of the Month for November 2023: Washington, DC, in the Twentieth Century. “If any city in the United Sates has borne the burden of serving as a symbol of American aspirations and has simultaneously been the place. . .where the issues of civilization have been focused, it…
Swiss Paraplegic Athletes: How Para-Athletics in Switzerland Addresses Urban Disability. – The Metropole
This is the fifth installment to our theme for October 2023, Urban Disability, an exploration of the role cities and their residents have played in the expansions of disability rights. By Dan Holland Sport has long been the leading edge of social change. Jackie Robinson played his first baseball game in the majors seven years…
The UK, UPIAS, and Transatlantic Disability Rights – The Metropole
This is the fourth installment to our theme for October 2023, Urban Disability, an exploration of the role cities and their residents have played in the expansions of disability rights. By Lisa Varty As a disabled person myself, I have an interest in the history of disability rights in the United Kingdom. Despite the efforts…
The History of Disability Rights in Washington, DC – The Metropole
This is the third installment of our theme for October 2023, Urban Disability, an exploration of the role cities and their residents have played in the expansion of disability rights. By Patricia Chadwick Disability history is woven throughout the history of civil rights, institutions, medicine, eugenics, technology, war, and pandemics. The study of the history…
Announcing the Winner of the Seventh Annual UHA/The Metropole Grad Student Blogging Contest – The Metropole
In order to further the ability of emerging historians to use online platforms to teach beyond the classroom, market scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities, The Metropole/UHA established the Graduate Student Blogging Contest in 2017. This year, our theme was Stumble; we asked students to submit pieces about efforts in urbanism that have stumbled…
Fighting for Rights: An Overview of Urban Disability – The Metropole
This is the first post in our theme for October 2023, Urban Disability focusing on the role of cities in fostering disability rights. In her 2020 memoir Being Huemann, pioneering disability rights activist Judith Heumann recounted her adolescent experiences in New York City’s public schools. She was part of the Health Conservation 21, a program…
How Work Has Shaped the LGBTQ Community—A Review of “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America” – The Metropole
Canaday, Margot. Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023. Reviewed by Ryan Reft When George Chauncey published Gay New York in the early 1990s, it fundamentally shifted the historical field and, eventually, the public’s understanding of gay life at the turn of the twentieth century. Building on work…
Historicizing Disability and the City – The Metropole
By Nate Holdren This is the second post in our theme for October 2023, Urban DisabilityIn 1966, attorney and disability activist Jacobus tenBroek published “The Right to Live in the World.” The brilliant California Law Review article ranges widely in its eighty pages, canvassing as it does the great many factors that contribute to denying…
Grad Student Blogging Contest 2023 Roundup – The Metropole
For those of us over forty, and particularly for folks from the middle, few bands loom as large as The Replacements, the greatest band that never was. Paul Westerberg and his bandmates stumbled their way across the country, releasing one quality, ramshackle album after another, full of pathos, humor, and grief, all while undermining their…
Yan Zongo: A Research Note on Accra’s Strangers – The Metropole
The ninth and final post from our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is from Fauziyatu Moro. She writes about how stumbling onto the important mementos of immigrants, while doing fieldwork in Accra, led her to develop her thesis topic, which broadens understanding of the lives of migrants by looking at their leisure activities. Pictured below,…
Stumbling Upon Stillburg: Using Memory and Research to Revive a Forgotten Architectural Career – The Metropole
Inga Gudmundsson McGuire writes about how discovering that her ancestor was a Pittsburgh architect inspired her to learn more about him and ensure that his memory and legacy are not forgotten in the eighth entry in our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest. I walked past the same framed photo for over twenty years. Overlooked, and…
Annexation Politics & Manufacturing Blight in a Black St. Louis Suburb – The Metropole
The seventh entry in this year's Graduate Student Blogging Contest is by Bridget Laramie Kelly, who won last year's blogging contest. In this year's entry, she writes about how a historic Black suburb was perceived by wealthier white residents as a "stumbling block" in the way of protecting and increasing property values. I grew up…
Stumbling into Submission: How Real Estate and Finance Capital Conquered New York City – The Metropole
The theme for our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is "Stumble." Our sixth entrant, Katelin Penner, discusses how leaders in real estate and finance forced New York City government to stumble into a relationship with them that has led the city to subsidize private development projects while reducing public services that support working-class residents. In…
Decatur Day and the History of Serial Displacement in an Atlanta Suburb – The Metropole
By David S. Rotenstein “Decatur Day is part of history. It’s a part of Black history. It’s a part of the Black culture,” Chevelle Eberhart-Lee told me in a recent interview. “And if this day discontinues, it’s like erasing a part of history.” Eberhart-Lee’s family has been in Decatur for more than a century. Her…
The Neighborhood Nuisance: One Woman’s Crusade to Shape Brooklyn – The Metropole
For our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, we asked for stories about projects that faced "stumbling blocks." There were a multitude of them placed in the path of Mabel E. Macomber, a Progressive Era playground advocate, written about by Alexandra Miller in our fifth entry. “It is true that my life has been threatened as…
Bound Aid – The Metropole
Our fourth author in the 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, Allie Goodman, describes the experience of a young woman and her family "stumbling through" efforts to obtain assistance provided by a settlement house but subject to conditions, including surveillance and extralegal work agreements. One evening in late August 1914, Mae Neiwski sat by Lake Chautauqua…