The Metropole Bookshelf: Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD by Max Felker-Kantor

October 11, 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Max Felker-Kantor Felker-Kantor, Max. Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. “A strong, visible police […]

Book Review: The One Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities by Edward G. Goetz

October 8, 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

Edward G. Goetz, The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017. 224 pp. notes, index. ISBN 9781501707599 Reviewed by Eric Michael Rhodes Should those concerned about racial inequality in the American metropolis bring opportunity to people or help people move to opportunity? This […]

With Great Sadness …

October 3, 2018.Reading time 1 minute.

It is with great regret that the Urban History Association notes the passing of longtime UHA member and membership secretary Dr. Cindy Lobel. Among other numerous publications, Professor Lobel authored the award winning Urban Appetites: Food and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York which was named the Winner of the 2013 Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize and the […]

Pacific Sole: The Lima Way

September 27, 2018.Reading time 20 minutes.

Capital cities always struggle in the public mind. They’re “swamps” filled with feckless politicians and their sycophantic followers. They reflect less the nation than its corrupted strivers and the greedy accumulation of power. Life is fast in such metropolises; people live harried lives or at least so this particular narrative goes. Traveling around Peru, one […]

Mid-Century Modernism on the Fringes of D.C.: Charles Goodman and NOVA’s Hollin Hills

September 20, 2018.Reading time 18 minutes.

When one thinks of Northern Virginia, Old Town Alexandria might be the first place that comes to mind. Historic, compact, and on the water, Old Town remains a popular brunch and tourist destination and a way station for intrepid souls proceeding on to nearby Mount Vernon. Yet, since the 1960s, Alexandria’s industrial areas such as […]

Opportunity Costs in the War on Crime: The High Impact Anti-Crime Program in Newark

September 19, 2018.Reading time 19 minutes.

This post by Andy Grim is our third entrant into the Second Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest. Grim’s essay exams a moment in which the city of Newark “struck gold” by winning a High Impact Anti-Crime Program grant. The lucre, however, proved a mixed blessing… In January 1972, the Nixon Administration announced a […]

“What I Did This Summer”: Drinking Urban History in Wisconsin

September 13, 2018.Reading time 25 minutes.

By Brian Goldstein and Theresa McCulla As a family of historians who study the city, we are hardly unusual in the way we travel: we like to experience places new and old through food and drink. Less typical, however, is that one of us gets paid to do this. Theresa, as the historian of the […]

The Value of Farmland: Rural Gentrification and the Movement to Stop Sprawl

September 12, 2018.Reading time 27 minutes.

This post by Angela Shope Stiefbold is our second entrant into the Second Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest. We invited graduate students to submit essays on theme of “Striking Gold,” whether lucre or archival treasures. Stiefbold’s essay hews towards the former interpretation, examining how rapidly rising metropolitan land value can mean “Striking Gold” […]

Busting Out in WWII-Era Brooklyn

September 5, 2018.Reading time 19 minutes.

This piece by Emily Brooks is the first entrant into the Second Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest. We invited graduate students to submit essays on theme of “Striking Gold,” whether lucre or archival treasures. Brooks’ interpretation of the theme hews to the latter, and she uses a memo discovered on a reel of […]

Urban Affairs Association is having its conference in Los Angeles next year, check it out!

August 30, 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

We here at The Metropole want to briefly interrupt our much desired (deserved? who is to say what anyone deserves nowadays) two week respite to draw the attention of urbanists to the Urban Affairs Association’s call for papers. Between April 24-27, 2019, the UAA will be hosting its 49th Annual Conference in Los Angeles, California, […]