MacArthur Park’s History of Surveillance, Refusal, and Radical Care

May 28, 2025.Reading time 40 minutes.

Editor’s note: In anticipation of what we all believe will be a stellar UHA conference this October 9-12 in Los Angeles, we are featuring Los Angeles as our theme this month. This is our sixth and final post; you can see others from this month as well as past pieces on the city here. In […]

Pittsburgh’s Chinese Laundries: Connections to the Past

September 24, 2024.Reading time 18 minutes.

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Jackie Wu Chinese-owned laundries dotted the urban landscape of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from the late nineteenth century well into the post-World War II years. Tucked in between houses, restaurants, and other businesses, the number of Chinese laundries peaked in the 1930s […]

(Un)Welcome Enhancements: Notes from an Archival Research Trip

August 22, 2023.Reading time 21 minutes.

Welcome to the first entry in our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest! Our theme this year is “Stumble.” Aimée Plukker studies the history of tourism, and in this essay considers what tourists are and are not supposed to stumble across, and how cities treat welcome and unwelcome visitors. To see all entries from this year’s […]

Murder at the Corner Store: Immigrant Merchants and Law and Order Politics in Postwar Detroit

November 17, 2022.Reading time 28 minutes.

By Kenneth Alyass On April 1, 1966, during a rainy Friday evening, near downtown Detroit Habiba Kasgorgis made her way to her husband’s store at 7503 Brush Street. Jubrail Kasgorgis was a balding, middle-aged man, who immigrated to the United States from Iraq a decade earlier. Like many members of Detroit’s growing Chaldean community, a […]

Latino Urbanism: A Review of Barrio America – How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City

August 19, 2020.Reading time 10 minutes.

Sandoval-Strausz, A.K. Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City. New York: Basic Books, 2019. Reviewed by Maricio Castro In August of 2017 I moved to Durham, North Carolina. Because I could not go apartment hunting ahead of time and because I had a very large dog that many landlords would not take, I had […]

“History Is The Most Compelling Evidence Police Cannot Be Reformed”: Third UHA Panel Imagines an Abolitionist Future

July 16, 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

Last night concluded the Urban History Association’s trio of virtual panels in response to the recent wave of Black-led urban uprisings against racist police brutality and renewed conversation about defunding and abolishing police. The Metropole’s Disciplining the City editors Matthew Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen moderated a discussion with historians Johanna Fernández, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Marisol […]

Toronto is Typical … because it has never conformed

September 11, 2019.Reading time 16 minutes.

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 […]

Sanctuary and the City

March 6, 2019.Reading time 26 minutes.

Editor’s note: In anticipation of next’s month’s #OAH2019/#OAH19 in Philadelphia, the March Metro of the Month is the City of Brotherly love. To get more info about the conference click over to the organization’s website, where you can also download the OAH’s program for the event. By Domenic Vitiello In the age of President Donald Trump, most Americans […]