29 posts tagged with urban and history.
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a portrait of Tenochtitlan
a 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec Empire The year is 1518. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, once an unassuming settlement in the middle of Lake Texcoco, now a bustling metropolis. It is the capital of an empire ruling over, and receiving tribute from, more than 5 million people. Tenochtitlan is home to 200.000 farmers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, priests and aristocrats. At this time, it is one of the largest cities in the world.
Today, we call this city Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico City.
Not much is left of the old Aztec - or Mexica - capital Tenochtitlan. What did this city, raised from the lake bed by hand, look like? Using historical and archeological sources, and the expertise of many, I have tried to faithfully bring this iconic city to life.
The Crane River
The
Crane River winds gently through West London, from the vast concrete bulk of Twickenham Rugby Stadium, past the
shot tower that is the last remnant of the vast gunpowder factory that lasted from 1776 to 1927 (blowing up 55 times), to the sunken Feltham Circles which are one of the few open graffiti walls in London. If you're lucky on your walk you can see seven species of bats, water voles, kingfishers, adders and eels, tawny owls and glow worms or Muntjac deer.
Constructed Worlds, Group Beliefs and Narrative Consciousness
Three Simple Policy Heuristics - "The most important thing to understand is this: Harm ripples, kindness ripples. People you hurt go on to hurt other people. People who are treated with kindness become better people, or more prosperous people, and go on to help others. Yes, there are exceptions (we'll deal with those people), but they are exceptions." (via) [more inside]
It Means ‘The Good Land’
“For most of his twenty-four years as mayor, Hoan lacked a sympathetic majority on the city council. But he won over many colleagues by showing it was possible to both expand public services and balance the city’s budget. In 1932, however, voters installed a leftist majority on the council, and Hoan was emboldened. At a time when many cities resorted to violence to intimidate striking employees, Hoan pushed for a law that allowed the mayor to close any factory if the employer refused to negotiate with the workers. He asked Milwaukee’s voters to support municipal ownership of the city’s electric power system and streetcars. They rejected the idea in a referendum, but other cities around the country embraced it.” What Milwaukee Can Teach the Democrats about Socialism
#FixTheFreakingSubway
Why Do Some Parts of New York Have So Many Subways While Others Have None? - So, who uses NYC’s flashy new, soon to be expanded ferry service? People who can afford to avoid the subway. - The city isn’t prepared for a planned shutdown of The L train, and it’s about to get even worse - (Village Voice)
A social experiment in demographic diversity
Revisiting the Greenbelt Towns, a Forgotten 1930s Attempt at American Utopia - “They didn’t want these towns built because they would be put into direct competition with the private housing market.“ (NYT blog) - StoryCorp interviews with long time Greenbelt residents
Global Urban History
Global and urban history has been converging in recent decades. My own interest is captured by the liminal space between culture and history and geography. Some favourites include Lagos: Mapping a Pre-Colonial West African City and the extremely well done the racism behind Kampala.
"They don’t believe that we’re even able to define what a place is."
Learning from Shankleville Scholars in Texas study unincorporated black "Freedom Colonies" formed during Reconstruction and still living communities -- upending conventional assumptions of community planning in the process. [more inside]
Pathways to Civilization
The Origin of Cities - "It may seem odd to conduct the rise of cities to ritual, inequality, and debt, and yet they play a very large role in the urban revolution." (via) [more inside]
History of urban nightlife in America
Here are 12 interesting facts about urban nightlife from Peter C. Baldwin’s article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, which shows how times have greatly changed and, remarkably, how some things have remained the same.
The Emergency Egress
Balcony Seats to the City: "Officially of course, the urban fire escape is primarily an emergency exit, but in New York, this prosaic adornment of countless five- and six-story apartment houses has assumed myriad other functions: faux backyards, platforms for criminal getaways, oases for marginalized smokers and makeshift bedrooms popular during an age before air-conditioning." [more inside]
Con Men! Artistocrats! Nancy Boys! Radiothearpy and More!
"The neighborhood has all gone t' hell"
Visiting the Big Apple? "Don't ask a pedestrian where a certain street is. He is usually too busy to stop, and if polite enough to stop, won't know. No New Yorker knows anything about New York." And another kind reminder: "Don't gape at women smoking cigarettes in restaurants. They are harmless and respectable, notwithstanding and nevertheless. They are also smart." Advice from Valentine’s City of New York: A Guide Book, published in 1920. [more inside]
Color Footage Of NYC In 1939
Eye candy, if you insist on calling it that
The trolleybus era
More than just pictures of electric Brill, Flyer and Pullman buses, trolleybuses.net has some great old street-level shots of many cities in North America.
Ephemeral New York
Ephemeral New York 'chronicles an ever-changing, constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin.' [more inside]
Resurget cineribus
Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray Not Included
For their 43rd anniversary issue, New York Magazine chose "to explore, across time, one of the things that has most defined New York life for centuries and has become a unit of measurement for our successes and failures: The Apartment: A History of Vertical Living" / Sardine Life: What a century and a half of piled-up housing reveals about us. [more inside]
We used to get 김치 on the corner....
In the 1960's, 70's and 80's, urban decay and high crime rates caused retail chain supermarkets to flee New York City. (google books link) Korean immigrants filled the gap with corner grocery stores. For nearly two decades they were ubiquitous -- symbols of the group's ongoing quest to achieve the American Dream. But 30 years later, Where Did The Korean Greengrocers Go? [more inside]
Lviv and the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe
Lviv Interactive, a project of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, is mapping the history, architecture, and human landscape of the City of Lions - including locations no longer there. [more inside]
Short urban exploration documentaries
Uneven Terrain is a series of short documentaries about urban exploration, about 10-15 minutes long each. There are six so far, about monumental ruins in New York, Centralia, the Pennsylvania town where an underground coalseam has been on fire since the 1960s, abandoned missile silos in the US and how they're being turned into homes, oil drilling in Los Angeles, the Teufelberg listening station and the abandoned bunkers under Tempelhof Airport in Berlin and pirate radio in London and on the old Redsand sea forts. Each short doc has a different presenter. All have accompanying photo galleries. [These are produced for the bootmaker Palladium, but it's pretty low-key]
Lithographs from the Touchstone Studio
Envisioning Chinese Society in the Late Nineteenth Century: Words and Images from the Dianshizhai Pictorial Very nice online presentation of translated content from the famed nineteenth century Shanghai pictorial journal (China's first); Dianshizhai (点石斋画报) was modelled on Britain's Punch and produced as a supplement for Shen Bao subscribers. Flash is used so elements in the cartoons can be clicked for further information: a young woman repels a thief with martial derring-do; a customer bilks on the bill in a street eatery in Hangzhou; small-town society and politics with the muddle-headed magistrate; a non-performing temple bell offers a chance for sceptical commentary on religion; the gentlemanly pastime of cricket-fighting.
"This Place Matters"
National Trust Releases 2009 List of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple. Additional detail and sites from past years here.
Holmes' and Watson's World
One minute and four seconds in London, 1904. Birkbeck College professor Ian Christie rediscovered this footage in an archive in Canberra, shot for a travelogue by film pioneer Charles Urban.
John Stilgoe wants you to go outside and look at things a little differently.
John Stilgoe is a professor at Harvard who teaches his students how to, among other things, mindfully observe the urban and suburban environments they inhabit. [more inside]
beautiful ruins
Photography of the unexpected and neglected architecture. Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand travel the world photographing "singular and surprising buildings of all domains," mostly 19th and 20th century urban and industrial architecture. Don't miss the photos of Detroit (under Projects), or more of Marchand's stunning work at his personal site.
Wilshire Boulevard
Curating the City A Flash exhibition exploring the past and present urban landscape of Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. A modest topic explored in depth - which is perhaps what makes it so fascinating. The site includes a pdf guidebook, in case you want to check out the bricks-and-mortar version.
Early 20th Century Harlem in Pictures and Stories
Harlem 1900-1940, a site full of pictures and history. The scope of this portfolio is Harlem from the years 1900-1940. Various elements of the history of the urban experience in Harlem's early days as the Cultural Capital of African Americans are represented here by graphic and photographic images from the Schomburg Center collection.
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