This essay originally appeared in Verily Magazine in October, 2021 Roughly a year ago (13 months to be exact), I found myself sitting in the passenger’s seat of a friend’s car, clutching a baby fiddle leaf fig tree I had bought from Trader Joe’s in Austin two hours earlier. I was fresh off a plane […]
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I lived in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. As August rolled around, I made a spontaneous move and have spent the latter part of the pandemic from Waco, Texas. My experience in these two extremely different contexts has given me a chance to see how the […]
We’ve all seen them on our Instagram feed: older people photographed in classy outfits, reading a newspaper, sipping a coffee, or walking with their hands folded behind their back. It was not until Europe that I realized how unused I was to seeing older people out in the city. On street after street in Rome, […]
Last Christmas, I had a lengthy and interesting debate with my mom about car dependence and the value of living in walkable places. Given her age and various health challenges, my mom was understandably suspicious about the idea of living without her trusty minivan. So I was surprised when she began sending me text messages […]
I’ve written previously about why it probably sucks to walk around your city. But I still think you should do it if you really want to understand the built environment around you. At the end of the day, no matter how many machines and robots whirl and march into our future, cities are primarily human […]
The processes that drive community engagement in our cities are broken, so most of us avoid them. They take up a lot of time, involve a dizzying amount of coordination, require divine measures of patience and rarely lead to the satisfaction of seeing something worthwhile accomplished in a quick and sustainable fashion. Like most political […]
One of the basic realities about cities is that they change. They change because humans change and keeping pace with this reality is at the heart of urban resilience. Resilient cities posses the ability to change with us as our knowledge, priorities and needs evolve. Resilient cities are those where the cost of adaptation is […]
As a traveling journalist, I have walked dozens of cities. I’ve walked the streets of Paris and Rome, the streets of forgotten small towns in the American South. I’ve walked exciting historic corridors and empty suburban wastelands. I’ve walked through ghettos, homeless encampments, busy intersections and luxurious, mansion-lined residential streets. With every walk, I’ve discovered […]
The events of 2020 have made it obvious the role that proximity plays in how we experience our cities. The lockdowns of COVID-19 trapped many Americans in their suburban neighborhoods. The rallies and marches surrounding George Floyd’s death made clear the relationship between easily-accessible public space and democracy. The shift to remote work has anchored […]
One of the most well-known Christian parables is the story of the Good Samaritan. When a law expert asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, Jesus reminds him to keep the law, summarized in the First and Second Commandments. “But who is my neighbor?” the legal expert asks. Jesus then tells the story of a […]