Call for Contributors: Cities at Play

February 25, 2026.Reading time 1 minute.

We at The Metropole are excited to issue a call for our next theme month: Cities at Play We welcome submissions about any aspect of play, recreation, or leisure in the urban environment. How have cities uniquely shaped the way their inhabitants play, and how has play in turn shaped the built environment, the social […]

Bicentennial Philadelphia: An Excerpt

February 18, 2026.Reading time 13 minutes.

By Marc Stein The following text is reprinted with permission from Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein, published by The University of Chicago Press. © 2026 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. When the PBC [Philadelphia 1976 Bicentennial Corporation] board met on October 23 [1970] at the Penn Mutual […]

The Streets and Spirits of Writers: A Review of Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens’s London by Lee Jackson and Balzac’s Paris: The City as Human Comedy by Eric Hazan

February 12, 2026.Reading time 14 minutes.

By David J. Goodwin The young writer hunched over their desk in a cramped apartment, the morose poet scribbling in a notebook in a cafe, the frustrated playwright buttonholing a producer on the sidewalk, the cynical journalist waiting for a source in a seedy bar—men and women of letters belong to the narratives of cities […]

Pittsburgh’s Fight for Fair Housing

February 4, 2026.Reading time 14 minutes.

By Dan Holland The passage of Pittsburgh’s first fair housing law in 1958, the second in the nation, and Pennsylvania’s in 1961 (also among the first statewide fair housing laws in the nation), were rare civil rights victories at a time when record numbers of African Americans were being relocated under the federal urban renewal program. The […]