One of the ways we make complex phenomena more understandable and familiar is to compare them with human traits and characteristics. Take cities. For example, we ascribe personality…
Category:
CITIES & URBAN LIFE
I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone on the streets of San Diego consulting a street map. For that matter, I can’t remember seeing anyone on the…
The paradox of walls is that you can’t wall someone out without walling someone in. As we view with some discomfort the erection of the huge walls in Israel’s…
The One-Horsepower Solution Enduring a breakdown (of the mechanical sort, that is) on the freeway is frustrating enough experience; but sometimes one most also suffer the gleeful barbs of…
People have long thought that I was born with this lithe but muscular physique, and the graceful, athletic moves of a dancer. But, actually, these attributes date only from the…
Many cities in America now have streets named after Martin Luther King, some of them streets on which he led marches and was hauled off from to local jails. There…
When two countries with the means and the mutual animosity to nuke the daylights out of one another and mess up the world are sitting down to see if they…
One of the little existential lessons of retirement is that the instincts one has acquired for the length of a career don’t “retire.” I think about cities and urban life…
Years ago, when I was researching my book on quotational thought on cities and urban life, I found some of the most clever and amusing material came from humorists. I…
It has been over two years now since 9-11 and while I still marvel at the event that has etched that date in our collective consciousness I still wonder whether…