Vishaan Chakrabarti. The Architecture Of Urbanity: Designing For Nature, Culture And Joy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. Reviewed by Dasha Kuletskaya Can architects and other design professionals help tackle the global challenges humanity faces today? Can design be a tool to address climate change, rising inequality, and the spread of right-wing populism? Can architecture […]
Davida Siwisa James. Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries. New York: Fordham University Press, 2024. Reviewed by Kevin McGruder In Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries, author Davida Siwisa James uses several individual buildings and collections of buildings, the people who […]
The theme for our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is “Stumble.” Our sixth entrant, Katelin Penner, discusses how leaders in real estate and finance forced New York City government to stumble into a relationship with them that has led the city to subsidize private development projects while reducing public services that support working-class residents. To […]
For our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, we asked for stories about projects that faced “stumbling blocks.” There were a multitude of them placed in the path of Mabel E. Macomber, a Progressive Era playground advocate, written about by Alexandra Miller in our fifth entry. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out […]
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 Rebecca Bratspies The Major Deegan Expressway is many people’s first experience of New York City. Travelers crossing the George Washington Bridge take the Major Deegan to the […]
Ray Bromley Professor Emeritus Urban and Regional Planning/International Development Studies University at Albany, State University of New York Please describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I retired from teaching and administration in January 2020 so as to concentrate on research and writing. My initial retirement plans were to focus on international comparative […]
Shanahan, Jarrod. Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage. New York: Verso, 2022. Reviewed by David Helps Thirty years ago this September, some six thousand off-duty members of New York’s Finest descended on City Hall, ostensibly to oppose Mayor David Dinkins’s plan for a police civilian review board. The nearly all-white mob drank […]
Sammartino, Annemarie H. Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Reviewed by Katie Uva East of I-95 and west of the Hutchinson River Parkway, on 320 acres of marshy land that was once, briefly, home to a United States-themed (and United States-shaped) amusement park called Freedomland, stands […]
Pedro A. Regalado Assistant Professor of History Stanford University Please describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My book project, Nueva York: Making the Modern City, explores the history of New York City’s Latinx community during the twentieth century, from the “pioneers” who arrived after World War I to the panoply of […]
Katie Uva Adjunct Lecturer CUNY Baruch @K80Uva Please describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I do a lot of teaching and freelancing these days, but my personal research is about New York’s two World’s Fairs (in 1939-1940 and 1964-1965, respectively), and how they shaped and reflected expectations about urbanism in the […]
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