The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Deborah Pellow In January 1982, I arrived in Accra for six months of research. Two weeks earlier, on December 31, Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings had led a successful coup. He was a junior officer in the Air Force. Two years earlier, he had led the June 4 coup; during his brief stint as head […]
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By Kuukuwa Manful It is commonly thought that Accra, like many other African cities, has an architectural “identity crisis”[1] because “if you look at the city, there’s nothing that tells you where we were, where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.”[2] This view, echoed in both academic and popular discourse, is held […]
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Movement, both unfettered and brutally curtailed, has long been central to Accra’s urban culture. From its days as a slave entrepot, through its decades as a colonial possession, well into its car-driven post-independence boom years, Accra has always been defined by movement–of the enslaved, by colonial administrators, of goods, and of postcolonial citizens. Take for […]
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As many of our readers may already be aware, SACRPH 2019 commences this Thursday in Northern Virginia (NOVA). In anticipation of the conference, we’d like to provide attendees and non-attendees alike to chance to explore a bit of Northern Virginia’s history. “Capital within a Capital: Covert Action, the Vietnam War, and Creating a “Little Saigon” […]
Read MoreBy Neal D. Polhemus October 18, 1976, the date President Ford signed Public Law No. 94-545, is generally considered the birthday of Congaree National Park. But the campaign to save the rapidly disappearing old-growth forests across America, specifically those in the Congaree River floodplain, began much earlier.[1] A more fitting birthday would be October 25-26, […]
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With September coming to an end, we bid farewell to Toronto. However, we would be remiss not to provide you with a quick review of our September 2019 Metropolis of the Month. The Indigenous City: Indigeneity and Toronto’s Past and Present Though we usually provide an overview of a city’s history, other times we focus […]
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Featuring Toronto as The Metropole’s Metro of the Month was the perfect excuse to sit down and devour that city’s newest cultural export: Kim’s Convenience. The CBC Television show is now on Netflix, where blog co-editors Avigail Oren and Ryan Reft got down to the work of bingeing it over the course of a week. […]
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By Jennifer Bonnell Flying into Toronto, I am always struck by the density and reach of its urban tree canopy. In addition to the mature trees of its leafier, privileged neighborhoods, the city wraps itself around the forested, forking ravines of three major river valleys: from west to east, the Humber, Don, and Rouge River […]
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By Mariana Valverde and Alexandra Flynn In May of 2017, Waterfront Toronto (WT), a tri-government agency, issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking an “innovation and funding partner” for a “smart city” plan on a small site on the waterfront. This RFP marked a major departure for a public agency that had long been assembling and cleaning […]
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Toronto’s suburbs have always been precisely the same as those of every other North American city: they have never conformed to stereotype. Now the stereotype – but do I really need to say this? – says that suburbs are low-density, white, middle-class residential environments. In varying combinations, however, Toronto’s suburbs have always included industry and […]
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