Nathaniel Popkin

On the first morning of December, milky light streaks the city and the day gets going. I’m on top of Drexel University’s new Millennium Hall, a 17-story residence designed by Erdy McHenry Architecture and structural engineer Cecil Balmond as a model integrating engineering and architecture. The tower, which stands on …

“I remember writing in my journal that I loved the idea of ‘a city dialoguing with itself,’” says photographer Marianne Bernstein, who this year curates one of Design Philadelphia’s seminal events, the Welcome House in Love Park. There, for each of 10 days (Oct. 4-13), a different artist will perform …

The visionary William Penn has ideas about city planning. He’s experienced the great London fire of 1666 and observed vulgar Paris. The wide streets, ample lots, and regular squares of his “capital city” will guard against fire and vice; its uniform street grid will encourage rational land development. …

Part 1. Filadelfia

[In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan sit in the Emperor’s garden. Polo recounts his journeys across Khan’s empire.]

Marco enters a city: he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man’s …

I resist. Sitting in a luminous apartment, I hear a car’s engine. I hear birds. I hear church bells. “I think I am getting accustomed to those bells,” says Lena, 9. Actually, aside from a noticeable lack of police sirens, the sounds aren’t that different. We have church bells on …