I look at the practice of democracy not so much as a fixed set of procedural requirements, but as a process that needs to have certain kinds of symbolic markers and consummations that define where people are in relation to each other.
Western conceptions of political secularism do not appear to have travelled well to other societies.
Cities are capable of uniting people, especially compared to the isolation found in that great object of nostalgic fantasy, the family farm.
How America has long viewed China exerts no small influence on which path Washington will follow in its material and cultural relations with the People’s Republic.
Taking a hard look at the smart city requires that we ask not only where it might fail to live up to the promises of its boosters, but also where it is successful and how it might nonetheless still fail us as citizens and as human beings.
Many have suggested that cities should be the vanguard of global governance on issues such as climate, immigration, and terrorism.
Within cities themselves, new wealth has been greeted with great fanfare—except by those who see gentrification as a threat to the communities that remained during the decades of white flight.
American politics thrives on exploiting confusion about real and perceived interests, whether those interests are tied to region or class, or both.
There seems to be little agreement on what it is that needs sustaining, let alone how we should go about it in practice.
At their core, cryptids represent the triumph of the particular over the generic.
All modern forms of government presume an objectification of their citizens.
Concern with authenticity seems to be unique to societies marked by conspicuous racial or ethnic hierarchies.
Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, are anything but relics of the past—they remain a vital part of the present.
The essential component of the liberal project might be the marketplace of ideas.
Cities are palimpsests, their contemporary surfaces concealing, though not entirely effacing, their more remote past.
For Marc J. Dunkelman, the verdict is clear: “The township, in essence, is dying.”
Thinking about homeless requires separating it from the larger discourse on poverty.
Can Big Data be harnessed for the pursuit of thriving urban communities and, if so, how?
We at Common Place over the past year read numerous articles on issues facing our cities and communities. Here are our favorite reads.
One of the most salient features of the post–World War II suburb was its localization of the American middle class and its propagation of practices of mass consumption.
Cities can benefit from Big Data through city-to-city learning, the exchange of best practices, and improving the lives of their citizens.
The renovated Place de la République shows the power of the public square.
In India's rush to transform, build, and even engineer entire new cities, critics are right to raise concerns about citizenship and access.
Reimagining our cities provides us an important opportunity to reconsider the various structures of urban life.
A murder mystery that is also an impressive sociological imaginary.
When someone so much as touches a state vehicle, the wheels of justice begin to turn, and that’s that.