The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
The pervasive effects of the coronavirus have forced numerous public history institutions to rethink their mission and the means by which an organization might still work toward long held goals in a radically different environment. Celebrating its 60thanniversary this year, Baltimore Heritage serves as just one example of this phenomena, as the historic preservation non-profit nimbly […]
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Kotlowitz, Alex. An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2019. Reviewed by Sara Paretsky The demonstrations that swept America in the wake of George Floyd’s murder seemed to show that the country had reached a tipping point: centuries after the enslavement of Africans arrived in the New World, a majority of […]
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For now, Cityscape is The Metropole’s listing of recent, forthcoming, or overlooked writing. When movie theaters and museums re-open, we will again link to films and exhibits of interest to urban historians. Recent Books To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America By Felicia Angeja Viator, Harvard University Press, 2020 An inquiry […]
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Yanni, Carla. Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. Reviewed by Jim Wunsch After leaving for college, students may discover that the campus, if not exactly like those depicted in Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, is in certain respects like a city neighborhood. If […]
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By David Helps In 1984, Hollywood resident Jerry Martz wrote the Los Angeles Times to observe a political impasse. With the fear of crime reaching a crescendo, City Council faced calls to enlarge the Los Angeles Police Department to 8,500 officers, which Chief Daryl Gates sloganized as the “8500 Plan.” Martz’s support for police expansion ran up against his fiscal conservatism. Nevertheless, […]
Read MoreLast night concluded the Urban History Association’s trio of virtual panels in response to the recent wave of Black-led urban uprisings against racist police brutality and renewed conversation about defunding and abolishing police. The Metropole’s Disciplining the City editors Matthew Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen moderated a discussion with historians Johanna Fernández, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Marisol […]
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Walton, Nicholas. Singapore, Singapura: From Miracle to Complacency. London: Hurst & Company, 2018. By Taoyu Yang If territorial size were the critical factor in determining a country’s success, then Singapore, at 280 square miles (less than half the size of Houston), would seem little more than a curious throwback to antiquity: a city-state, somehow still […]
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🔥🔥🔥🔥@UrbanHistoryA panel on Urban Uprisings and Racist Police Terror in Historical Context with @Prof_Suddler @AustinMcCoy3 @mfkantor and @hthompsn with @CharlotteERosen and @mguariglia moderating pic.twitter.com/UbY4A6pqTw — Marisol LeBrón (@marisollebron) July 8, 2020 In 1973, Detroit’s Stevie Wonder released Innervisions, a groove-filled album that was simultaneously joyous, sharp-eyed, and steely. In its third track “Living for the […]
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By Margaret O’Mara The Code is the book I wish existed in March 2000, the month I moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia, a dissertating history graduate student amid a sea of IPO-chasing techies and newly minted MBAs. It was the height of the dot-com boom (quite literally: the tech-heavy NASDAQ index hit its highest […]
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Last night The Metropole‘s Disciplining the City editors Matthew Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen (click those links to read their most recent work) moderated a panel on “Police Violence in the United States: How Did We Get Here?” It was the first in a series of three virtual discussions between experts of the carceral state convened […]
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