Both Los Angeles’ parking lots and its surprising presence and surprising absence of rapid transit suggest a distinctive relationship with physical space. So does the tendency of people who grew up hometowns not especially close to the city itself to describe themselves as “from Los Angeles.” Suburbanites do this everywhere, of course, ostensibly out of […]
I spent a few of my years in Los Angeles hosting a podcast called Notebook on Cities and Culture, which began with me interviewing writers, comedians, filmmakers, architects, and other such cultural types not just in a variety of locations around the city (often wherever the interviewee of the week felt willing to meet, as […]
“There are three great cities in the United States: there’s Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York — in that order,” wrote no less an authority on the built environment than BLDGBLOG author Geoff Manaugh in a much-sent-around reflection on the city. “I love Boston; I even love Denver; I like Miami; I think Washington DC […]
“Los Angeles is the city of the future,” goes the old joke, “and it always will be.” That makes it as suitable a point from which to begin this exploration of the world metropolises of the Pacific Rim, as does the fact that I spent the past four years living there. But I didn’t move […]
Where is the city of the future? Unless we raise at least $860 today, we can’t even begin to find out. The final day of the funding period for this in-depth experiment in crowdfunded interactive urbanist-travel-cultural journalism across the Pacific Rim has come, and it all hangs in the balance. If you’ve already joined in […]
With one week left in the funding drive for “Where Is the City of the Future?”, my experiment in crowdfunded interactive urbanist-travel-cultural journalism here on Byline, allow me to address a seemingly simple question: why search for the city of the future in the first place? As I’ve previously explained, for each $2000 raised by […]
As you may know, for every $2000 we raise on Byline, the “Where is the City of the Future?” project will grow to involve another potential city of the future. The first $2000 will result on a report on Los Angeles; the second $2000, a report on Seoul. But from that point on, I’ll do […]
Throughout the two months of fundraising for “Where Is the City of the Future?”, I’ll write regularly about what the project intends to do, how the project intends to do it, and how you can play an important part in it. You already know one important part you can play: the part — and a […]
Presenting “Where is the City of the Future?”, an in-depth search across the Pacific Rim for the best city to lead us into the urban century ahead — and a brand new model of journalism. Not long after the turn of the 21st century, the world’s urban population surpassed its non-urban population for the first […]