To (Not) Get Lost in the City of Phnom Penh

October 10, 2024.Reading time 20 minutes.

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Zhiyi Wang “Everyone gets lost in Phnom Penh,” commented a Cambodian friend when we were trying to pinpoint a location on Google Maps. He is from Battambang, which along with Siem Reap and Phnom Penh are Cambodia’s largest and most […]

BART (Dis)Connects the San Francisco Bay Area

September 12, 2024.Reading time 23 minutes.

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Andrew Allio The camera pans along the street, highlighting the abandoned buildings. Midway down the block, a bulldozed lot is littered with broken concrete, plywood, and other construction debris. It is May 9, 1967, and Ben Williams of KPIX News […]

Circumventing the Past: Navigating Around the Harbor Through the East Boston Tunnel

September 5, 2024.Reading time 22 minutes.

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Genna Kane Bostonians grumbled and complained when the Sumner Tunnel closed again in the Summer of 2024, demonstrating the significance of underwater connections to East Boston. The City of Boston annexed East Boston in 1836, but the harbor strained East […]

From the Railway to the Highway: The History of (Un)Free Movement in the Arab Mediterranean

May 30, 2024.Reading time 29 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the final entry in our theme for the month, Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean by Ingy Higazi In September 1923, Egyptian writer al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Mu‘min Kamil al-Hakim set out on a journey from al-Qantara, east of the Suez Canal on Egypt’s northeastern border, to Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. His month-long journey […]

Interstate Lovesong: How Popular and Official Narratives Have Obscured the Damaging Impact of the Interstate Highway System

January 3, 2024.Reading time 13 minutes.

By Ryan Reft Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has decried the racist history of the US Interstate Highway System, which obliterated many thriving Black and Brown communities. And earlier this year, Buttigieg announced new efforts at the US Department of Transportation to address that problematic legacy, dedicating $1 billion to “reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated […]

An Ode to Bus No. 60 and to Public Transportation in Madrid

February 16, 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

By Inbal Ofer As a social historian I have always found public services to be a fascinating domain of research. They are a meeting point between theories of progress and the practicality of everyday life, and between the aspirations of professionals, the dictates of national, regional and local bureaucracies, and the needs of different users. […]

Right in the Way: Generations of Highway Impacts in Houston

April 19, 2021.Reading time 17 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]

Writing about Street Life and Thinking about COVID

October 28, 2020.Reading time 14 minutes.

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 Brian Ladd My new book, The Streets of Europe, mostly ends a century ago, so it’s not about cars, but it would not have happened without their […]

The Texan City by Transit: Lone Star Seniors and the 1970 White House Community Forums on Aging

September 17, 2020.Reading time 24 minutes.

Our second entrant into the Fourth Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest is Willa Granger, who transports us to 1970s Texas to show how older Texans were stretching to their financial and economic limits to retain their mobility and independence. In the third week of September 1970, the Nixon Administration, in tandem with state […]

Policing the Automobile: “Private” Transit in “Public” Spaces?

April 20, 2020.Reading time 10 minutes.

By Sarah A. Seo Is a mobile home more like an automobile or a house? This was the key question that the justices of the US Supreme Court had to determine in California v. Carney, a 1985 case about the warrantless search of a mobile home parked in a lot in downtown San Diego. An […]