The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Avigail Oren We are reprising our Month of Academic Odes on the The Metropole because, as it turns out, winter 2021 was not the hoped-for end of the pandemic. Here we are, in February 2022, with all the more reason to embrace the positive (as long as it isn’t on a COVID test). Last […]
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Di Wang, PhD Distinguished Professor and Head, Department of History University of Macau Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? In recent years, I have focused on my project “Transformation of Urban China: Everyday Life during the Era of Commercialization.” In the recent three decades, nearly all Chinese cities have been rebuilt. […]
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Editor’s note: This is the eight and final post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Gwendolyn Lockman Butte, Montana, is currently known for its biggest eyesore and toxic waste site: the Berkeley Pit. It is part of one of the largest […]
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Editor’s note: This is the seventh post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Adrián Lerner Great rivers can seem capricious. In the Amazon rainforest, home to the Earth’s most powerful riverine system, river shifts can radically transform vast expanses in a […]
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Editor’s note: This is the sixth post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Brandon Ward Mildred Smith was fed up with bulldozers in 1966. She had twice been forced out of homes to accommodate urban renewal developments in Detroit, and officials […]
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Holtzman, Benjamin. The Long Crisis: New York and the Path to Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Reviewed by Claire Dunning The notion of “crisis” may feel overplayed these days but remains pertinent when upheavals related to climate, democracy, health, and white supremacy continue to go unchecked. As governments respond too slowly or not […]
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Editor’s note: This is the fifth post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Amanda K. Philips de Lucas Regulating Urban Runoff Presently, cities across the United States battle a microscopic foe. The particulate matter of urban existence, during wet weather events, […]
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By Joshua Salzmann and Emiliano Aguilar In the fall of 2021, Northeastern Illinois University launched a web-based guide to help scholars conduct research using the city government records of Chicago. A product of the industrial age, Chicago is a lens through which scholars examine signal events of the past two centuries: industrialization; urbanization; class conflict; […]
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Erika M. Kitzmiller and Akira Drake Rodriguez The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred national conversations about the substandard conditions in our nation’s public schools. Research shows that indoor air […]
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Editor’s note: This is the third post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Claire Campbell When the COVID-19 pandemic closed in, almost two years ago now, it threw our usual academic routines and practices into disarray. Classes “pivoted” to asynchronous, online […]
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