The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Peter Blackmer Editor’s note: This is the third post in our annual Digital Summer School for 2025, where we highlight projects in the digital humanities. You can read other posts in the series here. In early 2013, Michigan governor Rick Snyder declared a financial emergency in Detroit, which gave him the power under a […]
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Editor’s note: This is the second post in our annual Digital Summer School for 2025, in which we highlight projects in the digital humanities. You can read other posts in the series here. Created during a 2024-2025 fellowship at Temple University’s Loretta C. Duckworth Scholar Studio (LCDSS), the Queer Philly Mapping Project explores the spatial […]
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Editor’s note: This is the first post in our annual Digital Summer School, where we highlight projects in the digital humanities. You can read other posts in the series here. 1. What led you to this project? Or in other words, what sparked your interest and what drove you to create it? As an MA […]
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Launched in 2024, Soundscapes N.Y.C. is a podcast about how music created in New York has shaped the history of the city and how throughout its history the city itself has been an incubator for new music. It is a bi-monthly podcast series in which Sarah Lawrence College historian Ryan Purcell, talks with artists, music […]
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On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion ripped through the heart of Beirut, Lebanon. While the devastation left by the blast was followed by a series of reconstruction efforts, it has remained difficult to document, map, and support the living heritage of the city, especially regarding its small creative businesses. The Living Heritage Atlas | […]
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During the summer of 2016, architectural historians Anne E. Bruder, Susan Hellman, and Catherine W. Zipf came together over their shared interest in documenting the history of The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, more commonly referred to as simply “the Green Book.” As noted in their interview below, a series of conference engagements led to the […]
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If you’ve been to Los Angeles recently and had the opportunity to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), perhaps you were able to drop in on its new exhibit, “Ed Ruscha/Now Then“. Ruscha has long been an observer of the city, especially with regard to its vernacular and commercial architecture. While the […]
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By J. Mark Souther Few things embody the freedom of American life more than mobility, and perhaps no other form of transportation, for better and worse, has defined mobility in the United States like cars. Yet in the era of Jim Crow, mobility for Black families could be dangerous, even deadly; hence the need for […]
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Begun initially as a blog in 2015, before expanding to include photographs, maps, and other historical artifacts, Building the Black Press explores the publishing plants, corporate offices, and production spaces used by Black periodicals and their contributors from the nineteenth century to the present day. It highlights why Black press buildings matter—as sites of historic […]
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Picturing Urban Renewal is a history of urban renewal from the bottom up. The urban renewal story typically is told from the perspective of politicians and urban planners. This website gives voice to displaced residents and business owners, community activists, reporters, gentrifiers, and construction workers, as well as to politicians and planners. The goal of […]
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The Metropole 