A rare film that celebrates design and urban planning, Coppola’s latest epic is a mishmash of architectural, cinematic, and literary history.
The Brilliant, Unhinged Spectacle of Megalopolis
The Las Vegas Sphere: A Placeless Object in a Placeless City
The Sphere is technologically astonishing, but it’s not great for placemaking
Reaching for the Heavens
Review of Super Tall, by Stefan Al, about engineering and urbanism in contemporary skyscrapers.
The Metaverse Lands in Downtown Los Angeles
The more excited we get about the virtual world, the more the real world will suffer.
Los Angeles’ Least Cool Councilmember Kills Its Coolest Street
Los Angeles’s signature street, Melrose Ave., was primed for an upgrade. Then no-fun councilmember Paul Koretz killed the buzz.
Laurel Canyon: The Classic California Urban Ecosystem
Laurel Canyon makes clear that the music that defined American culture was itself defined by a specific place in a specific city—a city that previously had been famous for its supposed lack of culture.
Reconsidering Paradise: How Honolulu Became a Poster Child for American Autocentric Urbanism
Honolulu should be the most distinctive city in the country. Instead, Honolulu looks like Houston with volcanoes.
A Tale of Two Cities: Tourism and Imperialism in Sri Lanka
The semi-palindromic nature of the names Ella and Galle, while coincidental, are poignant nonetheless. They are two sides of the same coin. The question is whether that coin is a guilder, a pence, a rupee—or the almighty dollar.
Cannabis, Urbanism and Storefront Ethics
If we’re going to condemn one form of legal commerce on ethical grounds, we might as well take a look at all the others while we’re at it.
How Photography Profoundly Reshaped Our Ideas About Cities
For all the primacy of the way we move through cities, we must also consider how photography changed the way we saw cities and, by extension, the ways we build and experience them.
Kings, Despots, Dictators, Cities and the End of History
Recent history suggests that Fukuyama’s theory faces peril, if not outright obliteration. What this world will look like—figuratively and literally—in a generation or two is anyone’s guess.