The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
Editor’s note: This is our final entry in The Metropole theme for November 2025, Metropolitan Consumption. To see additional posts on the theme from November, see here. By Emi Higashiyama Tokyo epitomizes hunger. A metropolis spanning 2,195 square kilometers and home to 14 million people, the city operates less like an organism and more like […]
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In Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress – And How to Bring It Back, Marc J. Dunkelman argues that well-intentioned efforts by progressives have contributed to “render[ing] government incompetent.” Once championing a technocratic elite to run government from the top down, the post-Robert Moses mid-century shift, which questioned this elitism and sought to undermine it […]
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth post for our November theme month, Metropolitan Consumption. You can see additional posts from the month here. See also David Bruno’s piece here from The Metropole’s 2024 Graduate Student Blogging Contest. By David Bruno Rising from the ashes of the Antebellum South, Birmingham, Alabama, went from undeveloped land in […]
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Editor’s note: This is the third installment in The Metropole’s theme for November: Metropolitan Consumption. All other entries for the theme can be found here. By Matthew King On any given day, in any season or weather, the Wisconsin Dells’ indoor water parks are voracious, consuming over 16 million gallons of water and untold megawatts […]
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Editor’s note: This it the second post in our series for November, “Metropolitan Consumption.” All other entries for the theme can be found here. By Clif Stratton Atlanta will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Summerhill Riot (hereafter Summerhill Rebellion) in 2026.[1] The spontaneous revolt of the urban poor occurred on September 6, 1966 after […]
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Editor’s note: All entries for the November 2025 theme, Metropolitan Consumption can be viewed here. By Ryan Reft It’s no secret that cities and their residents consume. They are critical markets for food, consumer goods, retail products, leisure, and services. They swallow land and sometimes, in that process, people; just ask Bronx residents who Robert […]
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This year’s contest, The Metropole’s ninth, saw entries that considered the topic of “Light” from widely ranging perspectives, and both of this year’s entrants drew praise from the judges for “using the looseness of the blog format to make connections that might be harder in a more rule-bound academic article.” Alexandra Miller’s “Playing With Fire: […]
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This post is an entry in our ninth annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest. This year’s theme is “Light.” By Charlotte Leib “Surely you’ve heard about the penguins,” behavioral ecologist Joanna Burger remarks. I am speaking with Burger, a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Rutgers, because I’ve reached an impasse—the historian’s equivalent of night. I’ve been […]
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By Genevieve Carpio Being a historian often means living with the contradictions of the present. As an Angeleno, I see my city in pain. There is resilience and courage too, but the suffering caused by the recent immigration raids is suffocating. As a professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, and as a Latina going […]
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A NiCHE/Metropole Blog Series Proposal Deadline: October 24, 2025 Draft Deadline: December 1, 2025 Series Publication: January/February 2025 The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) and The Metropole – The Official Blog of the Urban History Association are soliciting submissions for Urban and Environmental Dialogues, a series that will explore how the environment-at-large and […]
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