This is a fascinating 1967 document from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a great window into how the Great Society tried to figure out what to do with declining cities, in particular into the faith in science and technology to solve urban problems. Turns out technology is not a panacea to solve […]
Tag: cities
In August 2013, word came out about a luxury development on the Upper West Side with a few affordable housing units where the developer wanted to force the occupants of those units to go through a sep
Children playing next to a dead horse, Chicago, 1893 This is probably my favorite image for teaching in American history. There is so much going on here. The children playing next to a dead horse seem
In the late 19th century, Americans were still trying to figure out why they died of horrible diseases all the time. At this time, the idea of contagion was just beginning to gain acceptance, which would lead to radical changes that saved millions of lives. Still, others had different ideas. Some, despite as you will […]
It’s about time I got back to this and finished it up. “City Enormities–Every Brute Can Beat His Beast,” New York, 1874 OK, this is not technically yet a dead horse. But it’s probabl
I’m generally skeptical of tax credits to businesses and I’d like to see them all eliminated were the government and everyday citizens to be empowered to fill in the gaps that these credit
Paul Ryan, unfortunately the latest Irish-American politician to forget the roots of his people and become a right-winger, has had a very racist week. Blaming black people for inner-city conditions is another in a long history of rich people blaming the poor for their own poverty. Maybe like howthe English blamed the Irish during the […]
Well, the revamped 538 site is up and if it’s going to feature articles about attempting to count the number of rats in New York, I’m on board.
It isn’t dead horse blogging (and don’t worry yourselves, I still have a good number of dead horses to show you), but this essay on the forgotten history of cows in New York City is great.
Now this is my kind of history: What did Paris smell like in the mid-18th century? Try skunked red wine, wet cats, and gingivitis-tinged sputum, all bubbling in an open sewer on a record-setting summer’s day. I can say this with some authority as I recently jammed my schnoz into “Paris 1738,” a scent that […]
An interesting argument that we need Robert Moses and Le Corbusier-type architects to remake our cities to become bicycle friendly: If Henry Ford were reincarnated as a bike maker, Le Corbusier as an
Jeff La Noue has an interesting piece about how to “fix” the Rust Belt cities. Using Toronto as a model, he asks why the Canadian side of the Great Lakes is booming and the American side i