6 July 2011
Isn’t this, too, the ennui of urban America? Yes, amid the urban resurgence—there is a Mexican resurgence too, more on that below—most old American cities are paralyzed by economic, political, and fiscal forces outside their control.
11 March 2011
At the end of the War, Philadelphia, which had been so crucial to the Union victory, boomed. As historian Shan Holt says in the film, “Anything was possible.” Airing on 6ABC in Philadelphia, April 26, at 7:30PM.
15 September 2008
To a great extent, migration defines contemporary human experience. From China to Turkey, Egypt to India, Nigeria to Ecuador, peasants are leaving fields for tin shacks at the edge of cities. It is a melancholic, and desperate, attempt to survive.
26 June 2008 | Philly Skyline
“Having never seen a city,” writes Charles Mann in his seminal 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, “its citizens had to invent every aspect of urban life for themselves.” Mann was referring to the people who built the Mississippian city of Cahokia, near present day St. Louis.
1 April 2008 | Philly Skyline
There is an important difference between Philadelphia in 2008 and Philadelphia in 1988, at the eve of the last deep recession, and that is immigration. In 1988, few immigrants came here.