The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
In City of Suspects, published in 2001, I tried to understand crime as an urban phenomenon, a product of the interactions between actors and institutions suddenly brought together by the rapid expansion of Mexico City in the late nineteenth century. The most important sources for that project were the judicial records kept by the […]
Read MoreThe Metropole is excited to debut a new series on urban policing, edited by Matthew Guariglia, a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Connecticut. “The basic mission for which police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to the repression of crime and disorder by military force […]
Read MoreTimothy J. Lombardo, PhD Assistant Professor Department of History, University of South Alabama Twitter: @TimLombard0 Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently finishing my first book. It is a study of post-World War II Philadelphia and the blue-collar supporters of 1960s police commissioner turned 1970s mayor, Frank Rizzo. The […]
Read More“The city has become a monster, an urban disaster, a planner’s nightmare,” wrote Ruben Gallo.[1] “Glorious Mexico City, once known as the city of palaces, is now gasping for breath in a sea of people, poverty, and pollution,” Diane Davis bemoaned in the opening to her deeply influential history of the city, Urban Leviathan: Mexico […]
Read MoreOn February 3, 2013, New Orleans became the American capitol for the day while the city hosted Super Bowl XLVII. The 2013 Super Bowl is most remembered for two events unrelated to the football game: the blackout and the halftime show. Beyoncé Carter-Knowles headlined, garnering praise for her performance of hits like “Run the World […]
Read MoreIn the process of building a bibliography for New Orleans, fellow scholars repeatedly recommended Emily Landau’s Spectacular Wickedness: Race, Sex, and Memory in Storyville, New Orleans. In Spectacular Wickedness, Landau provides a window in the the Progressive Era politics that dominated the nation during the first two decades using the notorious Storyville neighborhood of New Orleans. Landau was kind enough […]
Read MoreToday we are initiating our Scholar-Activist of the Month series. Nick Juravich, defended his dissertation in U.S. History at Columbia University on Monday, and in September he will be an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society. Nick offers this reflection on the relationship between scholarship […]
Read MoreNichole Nelson Ph.D. Candidate Department of History, Yale University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My dissertation examines how communities that choose to intentionally racially integrate in order to increase property values can serve as potential models to achieve racial residential integration nationwide. The methods that small, suburban communities have adopted […]
Read MoreIn 2014, the literary journal/magazine n+1 released the edited collection, City by City; a series of short vignettes from urban writers reflecting on the state of the nation’s metropolises. To its credit, the anthology included cities like Fresno and regions like Northern Kentucky, so it gave voice to oft ignored metropolitan areas. Moira Donegan’s […]
Read MoreRobert B. Fairbanks, PhD University of Texas at Arlington Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently researching the growth of the so-called suburban cities of the Southwest. One of the hallmarks of modern metropolitan America after World War II is the growth of huge suburban cities. Currently, Mesa, Arizona, […]
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