How can Spider-Man possibly afford to live in New York? And how can we make the city more affordable for dear Aunt May? In the first episode of my brand new YouTube series on pop-culture urbanism, we dig into the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" trilogy to uncover the housing problems (and solutions) of … [Read more...]
The Low-Key Housing Politics of Spider-Man
With Spider-Man: Far From Home hitting theaters earlier this month, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken one of the series’ biggest risks yet: pulling Spider-Man out of New York City. The gravity of this decision is baked into the film’s title — with good reason. More than any other Marvel … [Read more...]
An interesting complementarity in a city: rich & poor
Here's something I hadn't thought of in quite this way (but many others probably have): In a living city, space is cheap enough so that people with wacky (often "terrible") new ideas can test them out, while wealthier people in that city search for wacky new things to try out (because they've … [Read more...]
Why another book about cities?
The starting point for Jacobs’s analysis and the focus of much of her thought is the city, its nature and significance. There are plenty of books out there that in some way celebrate cities. Many describe cities as engines of economic development, wellsprings of art and culture, and incubators of … [Read more...]
The Disillusionment of the American Planner, or How We Became Mark Brendanawicz
Spoiler Warning: This post contains minor spoilers about Season Two of Parks and Recreation, which aired nearly 10 years ago. Why have you still not watched it? Lately I have been rewatching Parks and Recreation, motivated in part by the shocking discovery that my girlfriend never made it past … [Read more...]
The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities
There are many ways to tell the story of urban-policy failure. Economists have shown how rent control creates housing shortages, sociologists how welfare programs destroy poor communities, and urbanologists how urban planning can debilitate cities. In his book The Future Once Happened Here, … [Read more...]
Preservation At The Expense Of Liberty
“Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.” –Haruki Murakami I feel lucky to live in Brooklyn Heights. It’s been called New York City’s first suburb. It offers easy access to most parts of Manhattan, thanks to the convergence of several … [Read more...]
The Invisible City
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a short, often wonderful but consistently enigmatic (at least to me) novel about an extended conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Marco tells the Khan a series of tales about fantastical cities he’s perhaps only imagined. I’ve always … [Read more...]