The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
This is the fifth entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.” By Deborah Wolfson New York City likes to tilt itself towards the future—ever upwards, always remaking itself and its history. New Yorkers, too, in popular imagination, are self-styled strivers who are never satisfied without new victories. I would not as a […]
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This is the eighth post in our themed series, Cities at Play. By Sameer Chandavarkar Every year, Mumbai changes its rhythm—deliberately. Roads that are usually choked with traffic slow down or shut entirely as temporary pandals (elaborate festival structures housing Ganesh idols) are set up across neighborhoods. Intersections turn into gathering points where residents participate […]
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Murphy, Ryan Patrick. Teamsters Metropolis . University of Michigan Press, 2025. Reviewed by Gracie Anderson Gender history and queer history have long been concerned with the city’s role in structuring norms and identity. Ryan Patrick Murphy’s Teamsters Metropolis applies the lenses of queer and gender history to an unexpected urban subject: the million-worker boom in […]
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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: 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 third post; you can see others from this month as they are published as well as past pieces on the city […]
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Editor’s Note: This is the fifth post in our theme for February 2025, “Celluloid City,” which explores the role of and interplay between cities and film. You can see all posts from the theme here. By Shruti Hussain We lock eyes with a stream of children, of women and men, peering straight at the camera […]
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By William Gourlay If you present a map of Turkey to a traveler and ask them to pinpoint key cities, chances are they will immediately identify İstanbul, the great metropolis on the Bosphorus. Some would also be able to highlight Ankara, the capital, but beyond that choices may be limited. Few cities in Turkey’s Anatolian […]
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Editor’s Note: This is the fourth entry in our theme for the month of May: Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean by Molly Oringer “The rabbis prayed here, in Saïda’s synagogue,” recalled Basma, a Palestinian woman in her mid-thirties. It was early 2020, and we stood gathering in a courtyard typical of the medieval neighborhood, Ḥarat […]
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By Davarian L. Baldwin Balto, Simon. Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. By 2015, Chicago had become a symbol of the broken relationship between Black communities and the law enforcement apparatus. Outrage over the massive police cover-up of Laquan McDonald’s killing […]
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