The Greeks believed humans could only achieve their full potential in the context of a city and perhaps no city built by Greeks aspired to this goal more enthusiastically than Constantinople. As a truly natural city, could this former Byzantine capital serve as a paradigm for sustainable urbanization and green growth in cities today?
A more clever use of technology in cities would bring retired people together, for example, or allow municipalities to know exactly where their aging solo residents live, so that if there’s an environmental disaster such as a heat wave or a flood, teams can reach out to the isolated. The data-crunching can be done digitally, while the reaching-out can be done in person.
We generally think of artists as living to express themselves and to leave indelible records of their existence—but Dejan Lazić would apparently prefer to be forgotten.
Noteworthy reads from last week.
Tracing the development of urban policy in the United States is an often-vexing affair in historical wayfinding. Urban policy in the United States has been, like our metropolitan areas themselves, something of a sprawling mess.
With our backs to the wall and overcome by the sense that our university was imperiled, we faculty members made arguments that were not in the first instance financial, technological, or political. We made normative claims about what a university ought to be.