Growing Up in a Concrete Masterpiece (Blake Gopnik, New York Times) “‘How do you live with all that cement,’ my schoolmates would ask. ‘With delight’ was the only answer. They understood once they visited.” This provides as good an opportunity any to quote (past Notebook on Cities and Culture guest) Jonathan Meades: The destruction of Brutalist […]
Essayist, interviewer, public speaker
Notebook on Cities and Culture podcast
Books
Videos
Selected essays
- Chris Marker, Sans Soleil, and Japan
- Christopher Rand in Los Angeles, Asia, and Beyond
- Cities, architecture, and urbanism Open Culture posts
- Donald Richie's "The Inland Sea"
- Favorite Open Culture posts
- How Japan Invented Los Angeles — and Reinvented American Style
- Living the Vertical Life in Seoul
- On men's style books
- Our Car Culture Is Not a Problem; Our House Culture Is
- Reading Calvin and Hobbes in Korea
- Reyner Banham's "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies" at 45
- Subway station toilets
- The films of Hong Sangsoo
- The Korea in California and the California in Korea
- Three novels by Kim Young-ha
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Recent Posts
- Korea Blog: Korea’s Dilbert-Era Loanwords
- This week’s city reading: the strengths and shortcomings of Los Angeles’ evolving transit system
- Times Literary Supplement: Michael Breen’s “The Koreans” and “The New Koreans”
- KCET Movies: How Los Angeles Made Johnny Cash — After Nearly Destroying Him
- From my interview archive: “Undercover Economist” Tim Harford
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