Travel in the Magic City
This summer I moved to a new neighborhood that happens to be much nearer the freeway that divides my city. My house is less...
Riverboat Pilots and Economists
In “Life on the Mississippi,” Mark Twain recounts his earnest desire to become a Mississippi steamboat pilot, and his struggles to master the pilot’s...
The Ailing Parson Malthus Project and the “New Sin of Pride”
Anyone who's had the good fortune to spend time reading Christopher Lasch might be able to identify with the specific experience of risable joy...
Rituals of Embodiedness
This spring I had to buy a new coffee mill. Facing the loss of both my electric coffee grinder and my antique hand-cranked mill,...
Something’s Fishy–But Not Very–At Dinnertime
Ingham County, MI
As darkness falls upon what a friend of mine charitably calls “Jack-Ass Acres,” and as the promise of rain comes with the...
Rollin Coal and the Empire of Desire
Thanks to a good friend, I’m now up to speed on the phenomenon of “Rollin Coal,” which one commentator describes as “a new trend...
Place and the Role of Planning
“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Thus spoke Winston Churchill during the Second World War, during the debate over whether...
Civic Engagement and the “Native Country”
The modern liberation of the individual from the constraints of place constitutes as much a limitation as an emancipation. To put the claim bluntly,...
Architecture and Urbanism: Traditional vs. Modern
Grant me for the moment that traditional architecture and urbanism are more durable, more culturally and environmentally sustainable, more beautiful, and (in the long...
An Alternative to Cosmopolitanism
When people use the term today in casual conversation, “cosmopolitan” generally refers to a person whose disposition is one of urbane sophistication, not blinkered...