New York of the Future – Science Fiction Writers and The City

February 7, 2022.Reading time 18 minutes.

By Carl Abbott New Yorkers have gumption. They’ve got moxie. They don’t slow down and they don’t take crap from anyone. They’re also survivors who can sometimes figure out how to work together for the common good. That’s the shared message of two compelling and very different books by science fiction stars: N. K. Jemisin’s The […]

An Ode to Saying No

February 2, 2022.Reading time 18 minutes.

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 […]

Member of the Week: Di Wang

February 1, 2022.Reading time 4 minutes.

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. […]

Exploring The Role of Liberals in the Neoliberal Turn–A Review of “The Long Crisis”

January 24, 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

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 […]

Choosing Perpetual Management: Urban Runoff and the Origins of its Mitigation

January 20, 2022.Reading time 21 minutes.

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, […]

Unlocking Chicago’s History: A Guide to City Government Records

January 19, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

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; […]

The Racialized History of Philadelphia’s Toxic Public Schools

January 13, 2022.Reading time 32 minutes.

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 […]

Writing from Away: An Environmental Historian’s Dilemma

January 12, 2022.Reading time 18 minutes.

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 […]

Rose Pastor Stokes, Advocate “for the People, not the Profiteers”–A Review of “Rebel Cinderella”

January 10, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

Hochschild, Adam. Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. Reviewed by Sara Paretsky Rebel Cinderella, Adam Hochschild’s study of Rose Pastor Stokes, draws the reader into the early decades of the twentieth century when reformers and radicals sought to shape public policies […]

Opposing Urban Energy Landscapes: Petitions and Letters against Coal Yards, Wood Yards, and Gas Stations in Montréal (1940s-1960s)

January 5, 2022.Reading time 21 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the second post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Clarence Hatton Throughout the twentieth century in North America, the material presence of energy has tended to disappear gradually from cities. Following evolutions in transport technology and changes […]