The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
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 […]
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All good things must come to an end, and this is especially true of summer school. Whether talking about the 1980s Mark Harmon feature or the classroom, digital and analog, it’s come time to shutter our doors for a couple weeks as The Metropole takes some time off. We’ll re-open after Labor Day with a […]
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Digital Summer School began with Tropics of Meta where co-editors Romeo Guzman and Alex Sayf Cummings talked about the old and new initiatives at the academic/cultural website. We then moved the classroom to the Midwestern metropolis of Milwaukee as Amanda Seligman discussed the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. Today, we travel to New York City and The Gotham […]
Read MoreJoseph Watson Ph.D. Candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture University of Pennsylvania School of Design Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently wrapping up my dissertation. It’s a study of competing ideas about the future of metropolitan America during the 1930s. I focus primarily on two architectural projects, […]
Read MoreKim Phillips-Fein Associate Professor Gallatin School of Individualized Study and History Department, College of Arts and Sciences New York University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I’m actually between major research projects now, which is a nice though sometimes anxiety-provoking place to be! I have been thinking about a lot of […]
Read MoreMason Williams Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies and Political Science Williams College @masonbwilliams Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I’m writing a book about how New York City rebuilt its public institutions in the wake of the 1975 Fiscal Crisis—looking especially at schools, policing, and public space. The era of New […]
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By Brian Tochterman Across the banner of “The Metropole” as I write spans the George Washington Bridge, the majestic and modern steel link between the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and the city of Fort Lee, New Jersey, although those that cross it typically seek points far beyond those two ends. The “GWB” serves as […]
Read MoreValerie Paley, Ph.D. Vice President and Chief Historian, New-York Historical Society Director, Center for Women’s History Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? As a public historian working at New York City’s oldest museum, I find that my day job keeps me nimble where research is concerned. Just recently, I studied up […]
Read MoreMatthew G. Lasner Associate Professor, Urban Policy and Planning Hunter College, City University of New York Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am writing a new book tentatively entitled the rather cumbersome Bay Area Urbanism: Architecture, Real Estate, and Progressive Community Planning in the United States from the New […]
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By Daniel Wortel-London The land-value tax is coming back in vogue among municipal policy makers and scholars of urban studies. If real property consists of both structures and land, and if the value of land is determined by locational amenities produced by a community, then that community has a moral claim to this value– or […]
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