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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
Cartoon of a person squished upside-down in a city high-rise.

The Death and Life of Progressive Urbanism

Blue America lacks a Gov. Ron DeSantis: someone remaking a state or major city in the image of a well-articulated ideology.
by Ross Barkan via Compact on October 2, 2024
U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC, (ca. 1880-90).

Astronomy On The Flats

How the moons of Mars and the death of a president altered the late nineteenth-century Washington, DC, landscape.
by Vincent L. Femia via The Metropole on March 8, 2023
Photograph of walkway with trees in between two roads.

Eastern Parkway Was Never Meant to Be a Highway

The case for making the street more like the pleasure road Frederick Law Olmsted intended.
by Diana Budds via Curbed on August 4, 2022
Collage of four images related to urban development. Clockwise from left: photo of Ralph Nader, 1975. [Library of Congress] Aerial view of the Appalachia Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority [Tennessee Valley Authority, public domain] Edward Logue, at a hearing of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1965. [Digital Commonwealth, License CC 4.0] Hunters Point, San Francisco, ca. 1969. [San Francisco Public Library, public domain]

Public Interests

Three books offer views of the shift from public planning to neoliberal privatization, and emphasize the need to reclaim planning in the public interest.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on April 19, 2022

Reston’s Roots: Black Activism in Virginia's New Town

In the 1960s, a man named Robert E. Simon Jr. dreamed of a city that would be open to all, regardless of race or income: Reston, VA.
by Charlotte Muth via Boundary Stones on March 31, 2022
Margaret Watson, 93, touches a section of the Birwood Wall that runs behind her house

Built to Keep Black From White

Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That's not an accident.
by Erin Einhorn, Olivia Lewis via NBC News on July 19, 2021
Sketch of Harlem reimagined

How a Harlem Skyrise Got Hijacked—and Forgotten

The fate of June Jordan’s visionary reimagining of Harlem shows that when it comes to Utopias, the key question is always: “Whose?”
by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts via The Nation on July 10, 2021
A picture of Boston being modernized through urban development, construction is happening on several buildings.

How Did American Cities Become So Unequal?

A new history of Ed Logue and his vision of urban renewal documents the broken promises of midcentury liberalism.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on October 19, 2020
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Thomas Jefferson, Yellow Fever, and Land Planning for Public Health

Jefferson envisioned land-use policies that he hoped would mitigate epidemics – and other urban evils.
by M. Andrew Holowchak via HNN on April 19, 2020
A photo of Nelson Bellamy next to a photo of a boardwalk full of people sunbathing and wading.

“The Splendor of Our Public and Common Life”

Edward Bellamy's utopia influenced a generation of urban planners.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on December 17, 2019

Jane Jacobs vs. The Power Brokers

How the patron saint of progressive urban planning’s ideas and ideals were implemented – and corrupted.
by Sarah Mirk via The Nib on December 6, 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
853 map of San Francisco by the U. S. Coast Survey

Demolishing the California Dream: How San Francisco Planned Its Own Housing Crisis

Today's housing crisis in San Francisco originates from zoning laws that segregated racial groups and income levels.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford via Collectors Weekly on September 21, 2018

Rexford Guy Tugwell and the Case for Big Urbanism

New York City’s first planning commissioner lost a bigger battle against Robert Moses than the fight Jane Jacobs won.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on January 1, 2018

How Boston Made Itself Bigger

Maps from 1630 to the present show how the city — once an 800-acre peninsula — grew into what it is today.
by Betsy Mason via National Geographic on June 13, 2017

Draining the Swamp: A Guide for Outsiders and Career Politicians

Despite common belief, Washington, D.C. was not built on a swamp.
by Carl Abbott via The Conversation on March 7, 2017

Mapping the Urban Bike Utopias of the 1890s

Bicycle mania swept the nation at the end of the 19th century. Can it happen again?
by Greg Miller via National Geographic on February 24, 2017
Floyd B. McKissick and Kimp Talley stand in front of a tall sign that reads "Soul City."
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Soul City

In the 1960s, civil rights activist Floyd McKissick successfully sold President Nixon on an idea of a black built, black-owned community in North Carolina.
via BackStory on November 17, 2016

Emperor of Concrete

A 1974 review of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York."
by Gore Vidal via New York Review of Books on October 17, 1974
A man walks in the sun near palm trees and their small shadows.

How America Became Hostile to Shade

A roving history makes the case for shade’s centrality to public health, climate adaptation, and even a more robust and inclusive public sphere.
by Piper French via The New Republic on July 30, 2025
A monument to fallen Civil War soldiers with the New York City skyline in the background.

Green-Wood Cemetery’s Living Dead

How the “forever business” is changing at New York City’s biggest graveyard.
by Paige Williams via The New Yorker on June 2, 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
The U.S. Housing Corporation built nearly 300 homes in Bremerton, Wash., during World War I.

A Time When the US Government Built Homes for Working-Class Americans to Deal With a Housing Crisis

During World War I, the government constructed entire communities for workers and their families, setting new standards for housing and neighborhood planning.
by Eran Ben-Joseph via The Conversation on May 19, 2025
Fiorello La Guardia.

How Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Transformed New York City

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is questioning what a socialist might accomplish as mayor of NYC. To answer it, it’s worth looking back on Fiorello La Guardia.
by Joshua B. Freeman via Jacobin on April 23, 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
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 moving truck on cinder blocks.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on February 10, 2025

Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on February 1, 2025
The famous photo of the eyes from The Great Gatsby.

How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by John Marsh via Monthly Review on November 13, 2024
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