While not completely ignored among urbanists, for a city of its size and significance, Washington, DC—or at least its post-1968 incarnation—remains an under-historicized metropolis. To be fair, historians like Scott Berg and J. D. Dickey have tackled its beginnings in the nineteenth century. James H. Whyte, Ronald Johnson, Carol Gelderman, Sharon Harley, and others have […]
The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest exists to encourage and train graduate students to blog about history—as a way to teach beyond the classroom, market their scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities. This year’s theme is Stumble. We are looking for blog posts about: efforts in urbanism that have stumbled […]
When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) first took shape in the latter half of the nineteenth century, it did so as waves of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Latin America washed over the United States’ shores, bringing increasing ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to the nation. However, immigration intersected with large scale industrialization, and […]
Sevilla-Buitrago, Álvaro. Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022. Reviewed by Mohamed Gamal-Eldin and Marianne Dhenin Historian Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago delivers a provocative account of how planning has shaped our world in his debut single-author monograph, Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning, recently released from […]
Editorial note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Likam Kyanzaire Benin City sits at the eastern end of Nigeria, not far from its commercial capital Lagos. The site is home to the […]
Editor’s note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Robin Wolfe Scheffler On a warm, late-June evening in 1976, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, City Council gathered to contemplate the unprecedented act of banning a […]
Editorial note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. Please also note that in this piece the ninenteenth-century Dutch spellings of the source material are used here for all species names—both Latin binomial and […]
Editor’s note: This post part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Nuala Caomhánach The concerned look on their faces was enough to make me turn around and go home. Standing at the doorway of my shared […]
Editor’s note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Vincent Femia Simon Newcomb often arose from his bed in the middle of the night to walk two miles to the Naval Observatory grounds. […]
Editor’s note: This is the first post in our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Can Gümüş-İspir and Marianne Dhenin When Egyptian engineer and administrator Ali Mubarak traveled to Paris in the 1860s, he took a much-anticipated tour […]
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