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Sinclair Lewis.

How to Study the “Village Virus”

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.
by Vincent L. Femia via The Metropole on April 3, 2024
The back of the Hollywood sign at sunset.

The Hollywood Sign Debuted 100 Years Ago in 1923, the Year of L.A.’s 'Big Bang'

The year 2023 marks the centennial of many iconic L.A. landmarks, including the Hollywood sign, Memorial Coliseum, Biltmore Hotel and the Angelus Temple.
by Patt Morrison via Los Angeles Times on February 16, 2023
A pair of horses are unable to pull an overcrowded streetcar in New York City, shown in Harper's Weekly on Sept. 21, 1872.

A Virus Crippled U.S. Cities 150 Years Ago. It Didn’t Infect Humans.

The Great Epizootic, an equine flu in 1872-1873, infected most U.S. horses. Streetcars and mail delivery stopped across the country while fires raged.
by Jodie Tillman via Retropolis on February 12, 2023
Cover of "Escape to the City" featuring an urban neighborhood.

Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum South and the Question of Freedom in American History

The oft forgetten story of fugitive slaves whose escape from bondage found them in the Antebellum South's major cities.
by Viola Franziska Müller via UNC Press Blog on November 14, 2022
Aerial photograph of San Francisco, 1906.

How Private Capital Strangled Our Cities

By following the money, a new history of urban inequality turns our attention away from federal malfeasance and toward capital markets and financial instruments.
by Samuel Zipp via The Nation on January 4, 2022
Sepia tone photo of Hester Street, New York, crowded with people and vendors in 1902.

How Urban Density Can Make Our Neighbourhoods Better

Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty, but today it is necessary to make cities sustainable.
by Max Holleran via Aeon on December 9, 2021
Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.
by Yasmin Nair via Current Affairs on June 13, 2021
The Moshassuck River running under a bridge with graffiti.

Difficult Topographies

There are whole hidden worlds pressing into this one.
by Sam Coren via Contingent on May 5, 2021

City Sketches and the Census

Life across the United States in 1880.
by Bailey DeSimone via Library of Congress on October 20, 2020
A city skyline at night

The City That Never Stops Worshipping

Though some have likened it to Sodom and Gomorrah, New York City has a long history of religious vibrancy.
by Heath W. Carter via Christianity Today on October 1, 2020
Federal Reserve building.
partner

The Fed Could Undo Decades of Damage to Cities. Here’s How.

The bond market has fueled vast inequities between cities and suburbs — especially in smaller locales.
by Destin Jenkins via Made By History on April 27, 2020

The History of Cities Is About How We Get to Work

From ancient Rome to modern Atlanta, the technologies that allow people to commute in about 30 minutes have defined the shape of cities.
by Jonathan English via CityLab on August 29, 2019

Historical Public Transit Systems vs. Their Modern Equivalents

Interactive maps of public transit, then and now.
by Jake Berman via The Guardian on April 3, 2019

Model Metropolis

Behind one of the most iconic computer games of all time is a theory of how cities die—one that has proven dangerously influential.
by Kevin Baker via Logic on January 30, 2019

The Public Costs of Private Growth

Amazon, the Great Depression, and the fiscal history #HQ2 supporters miss.
by Daniel Wortel-London via The Metropole on January 28, 2019

What U.S. Cities Looked Like Before the EPA

Whatever the Trump administration does with Environmental Protection Agency, its urban legacy is clear.
by Andrew Small via CityLab on March 2, 2017
Demonstrators at a Black Lives Matter rally.

Fifty Years Ago, the Government Said Black Lives Matter

The conclusions of the 1968 Kerner Report portrayed race relations like no other report in history.
by Julian E. Zelizer via Boston Review on May 5, 2016
People waiting for a bus, one with a dog.

The Urban Upwelling

By tracing commodities beyond the human, we can learn a great deal about how cities function as ecological and economic units.
by Etienne S. Benson via The American Historian on November 30, 2015
Trump poster hanging on a federal building, scowling at people below.

If Trump Could Make John Wayne the Head of Homeland Security, He Would

Trump mixes restoration with revolution—his reactionary modernism wooed Silicon Valley, but for everyone else, it signals looming repression.
by John Ganz via The Nation on June 10, 2025
Model Cities staff in front of a Baltimore field office in 1971

Could a Bold Anti-Poverty Experiment from the 1960s Inspire a New Era in Housing Justice?

The Great Society’s Model Cities Program wasn’t perfect. But it offered a vision of what democratic, community-based planning could look like.
by Deyanira Nevárez Martínez via The Conversation on May 27, 2025
Sanitation truck.

W.A.S.T.E. Not

John Scanlan’s “The Idea of Waste” argues that all civilization is an attempt to make waste disappear.
by Madeleine Adams via The Baffler on May 15, 2025
Illustration from the “Projected Trends” section of Hugh Ferriss’ The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism

In the early twentieth century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia.
by Eva Miller via The Public Domain Review on April 9, 2025
Map of Boston in 1776.

Terrains of Independence

Why was Boston and Massachusetts the site of so much early Revolutionary activity?
by Garrett Dash Nelson, Katy Lasdow via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on April 2, 2025
Military patients in an emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918.

How the Industrialization and Militarism of the Early 1900s Helped Spread the Spanish Influenza

The public and private battles waged across Europe and the United States during the 1918 flu pandemic.
by Edna Bonhomme via Literary Hub on March 24, 2025
A painting of a Staten Island harbor filled with boats, captioned "View of the Marine Hospital and Quarantine Grounds, Staten Island, New York."

Quarantine Scenes in Staten Island History

Staten Island's long battle against quarantine restrictions, from yellow fever to COVID-19.
by Carlos A. Santiago via The Gotham Center on March 19, 2025
The title card of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

George Romero’s Pittsburgh

City of the living dead.
by Victoria Timpanaro via The Metropole on February 20, 2025
A person carrying a table into a moving van.

Why American Mobility Ground to a Halt

Once a nation of movers, the US has lost its “culture of mobility,” a new book argues. That’s been a disaster for housing affordability and economic progress.
by Yoni Appelbaum, Patrick Sisson via CityLab on February 12, 2025
A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.
partner

The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.
by Justin Hawkins via Made By History on January 31, 2025
Pedestrians, buggies, and a streetcar in a Los Angeles intersection in 1910.

LA’s Traffic Ordinance Went Into Effect 100 Years Ago. It Changed Streets Across America.

The Ordinance, which prioritized cars on the city’s roadways, quickly became the template for the country.
by Alison Sant via Next City on January 24, 2025
A collage of rats, trash, rat exterminators, and a rat mascot.

Rats!

Baltimore's long history with its most polarizing pest.
by Lydia Woolever via Baltimore Magazine on January 2, 2025
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