Urban Nightscapes and the Anthropocene

January 26, 2026.Reading time 16 minutes.

This is the seventh post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Sara B. Pritchard Ryan Reft’s recent photograph, “Sorrento Italy at night” (Figure 1), opened the Network in Canadian History and Environment and Urban History Association Call for Papers […]

Beyond Progress: Substations, Informality, and Environmental Changes

January 22, 2026.Reading time 18 minutes.

This is the sixth post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Yohad Zacarías S. Between 1920 and 1930, the Chilean Electric Company Limited, Santiago Municipality, and the Chilean government built 100 electric substations to transmit and distribute electrical power […]

Reading the City Through Countermonuments of Ecology: From Mistaseni to Floodlines

January 19, 2026.Reading time 25 minutes.

This is the fifth post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By John Bessai I used to study cities through their official monuments, statues and commemorative plaques. In the process, I started to understand cities through natural elements, including stones, […]

Remnant Urban Prairie Teaches Lessons in Loss

January 15, 2026.Reading time 13 minutes.

This is the fourth post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Carmen Gilmore In summer 2021, I volunteered with the Saskatchewan Native Plant Society to create a photographic wildflower brochure of the Saskatoon Natural Grasslands (the Grasslands). I’d become […]

Call for Applications: Inaugural Alison Isenberg Dissertation Colloquium

January 14, 2026.Reading time 5 minutes.

Call for Student Applications University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OhioThursday, October 15, 2026 Applications due: March 1, 2026 The Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) announces the opening of student applications for the inaugural Alison Isenberg Dissertation Colloquium, to be held on the afternoon of Thursday, October 15, 2026, in conjunction with its biennial National […]

The Making of Grimsby’s Dock Tower: The Entanglements of Infrastructural Relations

January 12, 2026.Reading time 10 minutes.

This is the third post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Sam Grinsell On the 18th of April, 1849, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (husband of Queen Victoria) laid the foundation stone of the Royal Docks, Grimsby. The […]

The Sidewalk as an Environmental Threshold

January 8, 2026.Reading time 12 minutes.

Sidewalks mark the aesthetic line between nature and civilization. They are the city’s environmental hinge, mediating between natural forces and social ideals of a civilized order. Through Chicago’s history, specifically during the City Beautiful movement and the civic interventions that followed, sidewalks have revealed how urban reformers sought to “harden” the city against what they perceived as disorder.

Finding the Flats: Or, the Cautionary Tale of Saint John West

January 5, 2026.Reading time 13 minutes.

With sea levels rising, with flooding and storm surge becoming more intense and more frequent, our coastal cities are on the front line—literally—of the effects of climate change. But not only have we warmed those seas and powered those storms by our use of fossil fuels, we have also made our cities more vulnerable to these changes by building into and over tidewater.

The Metropole

Month: January 2026