About
Nathaniel Popkin
Born in Trenton, NJ, Nathaniel Popkin has been writing about cities for twenty years. His essays on city life, the environment, and Philadelphia have appeared in various publications. His book Song of the City: An intimate history of the American urban landscape (2002, Four Walls Eight Windows), which the book critic Carlin Romano calls “exquisitely literary,” relates the struggles, despair, and above all, love, that defines the relationship of a people to their city at the turn of the twenty-first century. His photography seeks an understanding of the individual in context of the crowded and often claustrophobic street. Popkin is the Writer-in-Residence at Philadelphia University and a frequent contributor to the Philadelphia City Paper and to PhillySkyline.com, where he writes a column called “The Possible City.” He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Rona Buchalter and two children.
Profiles
City of Dreamers from The Pennsylvania Gazette
Philadelphia Dreamin' from The City Paper
Celebrating Cities from The Pennsylvania Gazette
Text in the city from southphillyreview.com
Author sings love song about City of Philadelphia from Courier-Post
The siren song of Nathaniel Popkin from philly1.com
Nathaniel Popkin has received a 2009 Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Books
“Philadelphia without revolution, industry, or influence, lives on by invention.”
The Possible City emerges from our dreams. Here, in the loving hand of the city planner-turned-writer, is the architecture of Philadelphia’s present resurgence. Here are the city’s beguiling founding ideals, the physical ruins of its might, and the search, amidst row house streets, for elevation, for an open city that delights, inspires, and rewards.
In the search for openness, Popkin encounters Philadelphia’s defensive pride, its instinct to protect, its fear of further loss. As a response, he posits a new framework for cities everywhere. No longer is it enough for a city merely to function. To elevate civilization, instead a city must perform––it must build, create, invent.
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