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Addison Del Mastro

@ad-mastro.bsky.social

1.2K followers 253 following 7.4K posts

Writing with a focus on urbanism, culture, and popular history. I write The Deleted Scenes, a daily, mostly-urbanism newsletter on Substack. a.delmastro2@gmail.com.

Posts Replies Media

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/am-i-doing...

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

"I’m not sure how to feel when I quickly snap photos out of view of someone because I don’t want to have to explain 'Oh, I write about…places. I’m writing an essay about how immigrants like you make these rundown places better! Can I take some pictures?'"

thedeletedscenes.com

My Way Is The Highway

How do you “do” urbanism?

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

Despite the number of corporate chains that have folded in the last 10-15 years, the retail concept of the category killer has very much never gone away, and may even be growing again

thefreemanmag.substack.com

The Return of the Category Killer?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Retail Apocalypse

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

Cities, or communities of any sort, aren’t reducible to their physical form, and so I think about how being too gung-ho about the built environment can mean you’re actually missing a big element of urbanism.

thedeletedscenes.com

My Way Is The Highway

How do you “do” urbanism?

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

On some level I want to observe a place devoid of people, just left alone to poke around. I love, and am curious about, what real, ordinary people do in these places. But sometimes they get in the way of taking a good look around.

thedeletedscenes.com

My Way Is The Highway

How do you “do” urbanism?

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

A little bit on why I love driving around semi-aimlessely

thedeletedscenes.com

My Way Is The Highway

How do you “do” urbanism?

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

"Google Street View doesn’t capture the spread-out, open-air cavernousness of a six-lane highway lined with deteriorated commercial architecture....or the feeling of standing alone in a cracked parking lot in a half-vacant strip mall on an overcast day."

thedeletedscenes.com

My Way Is The Highway

How do you “do” urbanism?

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

"Neighborhood character is not a fixed thing that can be frozen in time; it is dynamic, and in attempting to capture and freeze an arbitrary end state, we destroy the process by which that end state was created in the first place."

thedeletedscenes.com

The San Francisco Treat

An imperfect and beautiful great American city

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

That's interesting. I don't know, I imagine that plays a role. It's interesting because it's not something customer thinks about as much but if stores somehow didn't offer it they'd be much less appealing. I guess there was a reason catalog stores didn't survive!

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

"'You can’t just call everything the Eucharist!', you might be saying. But the point is not literally 'a YouTube artist crying is the Eucharist.' The point isn’t any of this, exactly."

thedeletedscenes.com

A little bit on what’s behind my work

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The individual buildings aren’t what make a neighborhood like this. The whole thing is its own place, even as the particulars hop in and out of the picture.

thedeletedscenes.com

Hop Into the ’50s

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #286

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

While there may not have been room in a product category for two or three competing chains *and* Walmart *and* Amazon, the threat to specialist big-box stores has never quite been extinction-level.

thefreemanmag.substack.com

The Return of the Category Killer?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Retail Apocalypse

Reposted by Addison Del Mastro

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I didn't *not* go back over 100 years on the history of a building so I could rewrite an 1890 ad - "Young man, speaking Scandinavian and English, wishes to get a position as clerk in a store, understands care of horses" - as a YMCA verse

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I didn't *not* go back over 100 years on the history of a building so I could rewrite an 1890 ad - "Young man, speaking Scandinavian and English, wishes to get a position as clerk in a store, understands care of horses" - as a YMCA verse

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Chain store co-branding - Toys 'R' Us in Macy's, Party City in Staples, Bed Bath & Beyond/Container Store hybrids - is a fascinating idea. It's a way to preserve category-killer-like focus when the economics of a 30k-50k store may no longer work.

thefreemanmag.substack.com

The Return of the Category Killer?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Retail Apocalypse

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The persistence of brick-and-mortar retail, even corporate chain retail, speaks ultimately to our need to exist in the physical world. E-commerce, AI, digital-everything, etc. can’t ever remove that. It is just irreducibly part of being human.

thefreemanmag.substack.com

The Return of the Category Killer?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Retail Apocalypse

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I argue here that "Abundance" is controversial because it upends our mental shortcut of thinking of difficult or scarce things as valuable and easily available things as worthless. It requires us to separate difficulty and adversity from worth.

thedeletedscenes.com

"Abundance" Is About The Humility To Receive

Is it good, bad, or indifferent to make things easier?

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

My latest piece, on the curious persistence of the “category killer” retail segment, and the importance of doing business in person, in the physical world

thefreemanmag.substack.com

The Return of the Category Killer?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Retail Apocalypse

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Full piece, a fun and deceptive building in Saint Paul, Minnesota:

thedeletedscenes.com

Hop Into the ’50s

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #286

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Often it is actually quite strange to me how a piece can come together thematically from little hints and nudges and impulses that would seem to have nothing at all to do with one another. Let me walk you through one example.

thedeletedscenes.com

A little bit on what’s behind my work

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

It has taken me some years to become fully comfortable with the idea that I have a “creative process.” I picked up the bias of thinking of artsy people mostly as not gainfully employed. “I’m gainfully employed so I must not be an artsy person.”

thedeletedscenes.com

A little bit on what’s behind my work

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Awesome!

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

A process of clinical or cynical detachment will somehow yield a less meaningful and moving piece of art. It’s a little like how I describe a seasoning in a dish that adds a subtle je ne sais quoi: “You don’t taste it, but it tastes different without it.”

thedeletedscenes.com

A little bit on what’s behind my work

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

"A great deal of personal essay writing is either dramatic and confessional, like a public diary entry, making the reader feel prurient; or it is deceptively abstract and high register, a series of specifics disguised as generalities."

thedeletedscenes.com

A little bit on what’s behind my work

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Will be there!

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Some thoughts on, I guess, my creative process

thedeletedscenes.com

A little bit on what’s behind my work

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

As an incisive comment I came across on Reddit put it, “Nothing is ever as good as it was.”

thedeletedscenes.com

A neighborhood, town, or city can never be "full"

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

There’s a tendency to view every given moment in a place’s long evolution as what that place is, or is supposed to be. None of them are. Neighborhood character is real, but it is not fixed.

thedeletedscenes.com

A neighborhood, town, or city can never be "full"

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

We have been building out rather than up for so many decades that there is no longer any real living memory of what actual urban growth looks like

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Lots here, check out the piece and thanks for following along!

thedeletedscenes.com

In Suburbia, No One Can Hear You Clean

How college life created quiet logistical constraints against clutter

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

And so "just try harder" and "have some elitist tell you what to do" both fail; the issue here is a subtle frustration that's difficult to describe, when the things you on some level want to do aren't backed up by the norms or defaults of society.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

But once the circumstances and incentives push towards buying or keeping one more thing, it suddenly takes an effort of willpower to do what your circumstances more or less once did for you.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I riff in the beginning of this piece on "you will own nothing and be happy," and like, kind of? Not when someone tells me what to do, but when the circumstances and incentives of my everyday life pushed against consumerism. Looking back, I really appreciated that.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

The times when I didn't have as much money or room - college and grad school - were liberating in the sense of stuff/clutter not being a part of my psychology because it wasn't physically (or financially) possible to accumulate too much.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

And by decluttering I don't just literally mean getting rid of things you don't need. I also mean the psychology of always having just a little too much, and how, as long as space permits, it's harder to prune the excess 10 or 20 percent than it is to just leave it.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

This is not exactly a *counterpoint* to the benefits of cheap consumer goods and lots of space to put them; in many ways that everyday abundance is a good thing. It's more about the quiet friction of excess space serving as a barrier to decluttering. www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/in-suburbi...

Reposted by Addison Del Mastro

d. reed, crisp & juicy enjoyer 🦀🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇾 @justupthepike.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

get in losers we’re going to a @mocomikee.bsky.social thread

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I've never really thought about how much modern housing advocacy isn't just about building more housing, but about implicitly redefining several generations' understanding of what urban growth is www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/good-to-th...

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I never really considered that the urbanist tendency to understand housing as densification or infill is really fundamentally different from how the American public thinks about urban growth.

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This week's subscribers-only piece reflects on an incisive comment from a reader, which causes me to think further about the implied philosophy behind modern housing advocacy

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

A reader reminds me that the idea of densification, especially within existing suburban communities, was pretty much unknown in the 20th century. "Growth" and "new housing" for most Americans don't just entail sprawl, they *are* sprawl.

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Reposted by Addison Del Mastro

Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

One of the things I love love love about getting older is that so many of my things got older with me. I love that I’ve had my dishes and flatware for over a decade. I love that my living room rug has been with me for 20 years. I love that my winter coat has seen so many winters.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I think perhaps we overestimate how familiar the American public is with our cause. We might overestimate the extent to which people are disagreeing with us per se, rather than seeing us as a weird narrow cause that it would be absurd to even consider.

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Oh yeah. I had to learn that initially though, my own background was right-NIMBYs and other right flavors of anti-everything

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I wrote about this once (more than once). As someone who gets this right-wing bubble a little bit but share few of its politics, I think, maybe, my approach can reach other people predisposed to reject anything that codes left without actually considering the underlying idea.

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

...like, "Anyone who talks like that is insane and nothing they say is worth listening to." But the same idea put into language they could accept might actually reach them. Maybe this is a minority of people, but they definitely exist. This is just finding the right rhetoric or "packaging."

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It's perfectly fine to make drivers feel uncomfortable, but how I see this as a conservative-ish urbanist is more of a know your audience. I know people, and I was one once, who would agree with what is being proposed but take the "lefty" language around it to mean the idea must be bad...

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"Cutting down trees and swallowing up the countryside into suburban sprawl is just growth; demanding that more housing be built in existing communities so you can live exactly where you want to is an ask, a demand."

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

On the idea, offered by a reader, that the hostility towards the pro-housing cause is kind of logical, in the sense that the idea of growth/new housing as the densification of existing communities is was not necessary or expected for generations

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits

Addison Del Mastro @ad-mastro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"'Housing advocates' have this funny insult, 'NIMBY,' for people who just accept the inherited and previously more or less universal idea that communities are 'built out' and then finished, and that new housing either goes in cities or in new suburbs."

thedeletedscenes.com

Good To The Last Lot

On housing advocacy arising from sprawl reaching its limits