This is the sixth entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.”  By Sara Naghibizadeh In the summer of 2026, Knoxville's Mountain View neighborhood feels emptied of life. Walking through, I had the Knoxville Auditorium & Coliseum on my right and, on my left, a parking lot stretching the length of two city blocks. To the south stood a former Hyatt hotel.

This is the fifth entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.”  By Deborah Wolfson New York City likes to tilt itself towards the future—ever upwards, always remaking itself and its history. New Yorkers, too, in popular imagination, are self-styled strivers who are never satisfied without new victories.1 I would not as a general rule recommend walking up to New Yorkers and calling them losers,

This is the fourth entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.”  By Heather N. Jahrling White police in white helmets. Jimmy Breslin spotted them in Harlem in July 1964, as protests over the fatal police shooting of fifteen-year-old James Powell spiraled into six days of fiery disorder: “The cops were everywhere, four and five of them on a street corner,” he wrote for the…

This is the third entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.” By Maria Rose Francis During a community-led walk through Milwaukee’s Midtown neighborhood in the summer of 2023, Ms. Betty Glosson, Ms. Talibah Mateen-Hooper, and Prof. Portia Cobb brought an earlier landscape back into view. At one corner, Ms. Betty recalled neighborhood efforts to stop stores from selling alcohol and cigarettes to children.

This is the second entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Revolution.” By Vanessa Christman I must have driven my husband insane when we first tuned into Apple TV’s The Studio. Instead of enjoying the comedic hijinks, I went heavy on the pause button to examine the fictional Continental Studios headquarters. A tour guide in the show calls it “a Frank Lloyd Wright building, built in 1927, in his signature Mayan style,” a “temple of cinema.”1 The building is a set, but a good enough one that architecture magazines ran pieces clarifying it is a television homage, not real.2…

This is the first entry in our 10th Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, "Revolution." By Sarah Daisy Amador Farmers in the Palouse, a pastoral region encompassing southeastern Washington and central Idaho, burned 11,057 acres of Kentucky bluegrass stubble after harvest on September 12, 1994. The following morning, an acute asthma attack claimed the life of 21-year-old Aaron Dittmer in Pullman, Washington.

This is the ninth post in our themed series, Cities at Play. By Jason Collins To this day, Eden Gardens is fondly remembered as one of the greatest cricket venues of the modern world, a reputation built on its scale, longevity, and atmosphere. The ICC lists its current seating capacity at around 68,000 and notes that the ground has hosted Tests, One Day Internationals, T20 Internationals, major domestic fixtures, and league cricket.

Revolution The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest is marking its tenth anniversary this year! The blogging contest exists to support graduate students in explorin…

This is the eighth post in our themed series, Cities at Play. By Sameer Chandavarkar Every year, Mumbai changes its rhythm—deliberately. Roads that are usually choked with traffic slow down or shut entirely as temporary pandals (elaborate festival structures housing Ganesh idols) are set up across neighborhoods. Intersections turn into gathering points where residents participate in aartis (prayer rituals), cultural performances, and community events.

Murphy, Ryan Patrick. Teamsters Metropolis . University of Michigan Press, 2025. Reviewed by Gracie Anderson Gender history and queer history have long been concerned with the city’s role in structuring norms and identity.1 Ryan Patrick Murphy’s Teamsters Metropolis applies the lenses of queer and gender history to an unexpected urban subject: the million-worker boom in Teamster union membership over the course of the 1950s.

This is the seventh post in our series, Cities at Play. By Sandra Coffey In Tarragona, a coastal city in Catalunya, Spain, the past sits so casually in the Plaça del Fòrum that many first-time visitors stop in disbelief. Here, 1st century Roman ruins, the surviving remnants of the Provincial Forum of Roman Tarraco, lie open to the elements and to the public.

By Anna Rose The night before the explosion, the air in San Juanico felt heavy and hot, as though it was boiling.1 But that feeling was nothing new. The residents of San Juanico, a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Mexico City, had long lived with hot, stagnant air and the pungent smell of gas. They often fell asleep to the sounds of hissing steam and the occasional blowtorch-like roar of fire.

Moten, Crystal Marie. Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee. Vanderbilt University Press, 2023.  Reviewed by Hannah Bruno “Of course, this is/was/has always been hard work.”1 So said Black feminist historian Crystal Moten writing about intellectual work in the midst of the 2020 uprisings; so she demonstrates in her 2023 history of postwar Milwaukee’s Black working women, …

By Zehra Betül Atasoy One night in 1910, a woman named Şükrüye was accused of wandering through a burned neighborhood in Istanbul with unidentified men. Her alleged offense was not a clearly defined criminal act, but rather her presence in a fire-ravaged urban space at night, in the company of men whose identities remained unknown.1 In official records, this situation was framed as morally suspicious, evoking the possibility of illicit encounters linked to prostitution and, by extension, the spread of disease.

The Metropole is pleased to solicit pitches for our upcoming theme month: Selling the City. We welcome submissions focused on efforts to brand and market cities, build infrastructure supporting urban commerce, and drive urban tourism, as well as posts on financialization and real estate as factors shaping cities. Present-day examples that make appeals to the historical image and legacy of a city are welcome, as are examples from the past of people trying to “sell” a given city or the idea of a city.

This is the sixth post in our themed series, Cities at Play. By Desiree Beare On summer evenings along Central Avenue in Albuquerque, the city’s historic stretch of Route 66 becomes something more than a transportation corridor: it becomes a stage. Lowriders glide slowly past neon signs and crowded sidewalks, their chrome catching the desert sun as hydraulic suspensions lift and settle in rhythmic motion.

Revolution The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest is marking its tenth anniversary this year! The blogging contest exists to support graduate students in exploring short form, publicly oriented history writing as a way to teach beyond the classroom, develop marketable skills, and promote the enduring value of the humanities. This year’s theme is RevolutionWe are looking for blog posts that approach urban history from any of a number of facets, including but not limited to: cities driving and responding to political revolutions, revolutionary social or technological changes as emerging from or experienced in cities, and moments in urban history that have “revolutionized” the field.

This is the fifth post in our themed series, Cities at Play. By Ahmadu Abubakar From Playground to Panopticon: Colonial Youth Welfare and the Shaping of Urban Leisure in Lagos and Nairobi In the late 1940s, colonial authorities in Nairobi began to express growing concern about what they referred to as "the presence and increasing number of unattended youth and young people in the towns,” which were connected to an increased incidence of crime and disorder.

This is the fourth post in our theme series for May, Cities at Play. By Dan Holland This year’s NFL Draft, held in Pittsburgh from April 23rd-25th, attracted an estimated 800,000 fans over three days, a record reinforcing the importance of sport to cities in the post-industrial era.1 Sport has long been deeply embedded in Pittsburgh’s Black community as a catalyst for change and an indicator of success and resilience in the face of discrimination.

This is the third entry in our May series, Cities at Play. By Dr. Ellery Weil In 2005, the London skyline faced a threat to one of its iconic features, in the form of an eviction notice. The target? The London Eye. The Ferris wheel, which had been constructed in honor of the new millennium, had found itself caught up in a rent dispute with the owners of the land on which it stood.

This is the second post in our May theme month, Cities at Play. By Maggie McNulty On November 30, 2022 at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Interstate 70 (I-70) Cover Park in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, Governor Jared Polis stated, “This is really a model of innovative solutions, green infrastructure, state of the art technology and community involvement from the ground up.” Former Councilwoman At-Large Debbie Ortega observed the project’s "unprecedented commitment” to the community.

This post is the first entry in our May theme month, Cities at Play. By Alexandra Miller The bullet ripped through Max Kaufman. It was a Thursday morning in August 1919, and the twelve-year-old boy was playing in front of his Brooklyn home in the rapidly developing stretch of Snediker Avenue between Dumont and Livonia Avenues. There was a month of summer left, and with no job, Max spent his days playing.

By Natalie Behrends On Wednesday, November 4th, 1914, Henry Goldfogle was triumphant. It was the day after the election, and the seven-term Democratic Congressman from Manhattan’s Twelfth District …

By Grace Gillies In the early second century BC, Rome was rocked by a scandal so intense that the consuls decided to pursue investigations instead of leading their foreign campaigns. These investigations led to severe restrictions to the worship of Bacchus (Greek Dionysos) and even the execution of Roman citizens. The Bacchanalian conspiracy has been interpreted as xenophobic backlash in the wake of foreign wars, as well as the state's anxiety about the formation of private associations as Rome grew.

Reviewed by Robert Dubovy In 2010, Heather Ann Thompson wrote that American cities suffered “deep racial and political conflicts” and “experienced tremendous distress from substantial economic disinvestment” after WWII. She challenged researchers to explain how the expansion of the carceral state and the rise of mass incarceration played a role.1 Stuart Schrader’s new book Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves…

Interviewed by Ryan Reft In Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America, Michael Glass explores the growth of Long Island’s suburbs as a proxy for the nation. In particular, Glass reveals the role that debt and debt financing played in constructing a suburban landscape that by the 1950s and 60s had become mired in complicated and costly economic structures that contributed to great inequality in housing and education for residents.

This article includes excerpts from A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch andthe Dream of Affordable Housing by Betty Boyd Caroli and published by OxfordUniversity Press in the US © Caroli 2/2/26. Used by permission. All rightsreserved. Footnotes have been removed to ease reading. Lectures formed the centerpiece of Mary’s days, and she planned carefully to take advantage of the most valuable offerings.

By Dan Holland Pittsburgh’s mid-twentieth century renaissance is often hailed as a transformational makeover for a city desperately trying to escape its smoky past. Male leaders such as Pittsburgh Mayor David Lawrence (1889-1966), who would become Pennsylvania’s 37th governor, Richard King Mellon (1899-1970), the Mellon Bank financier, and Edgar Kaufmann (1885-1955), who directed Kaufmann’s Department Store in Downtown Pittsburgh, are chiefly remembered for their urban renewal efforts in Pittsburgh.

We at The Metropole are excited to issue a call for our next theme month: Cities at Play We welcome submissions about any aspect of play, recreation, or leisure in the urban environment. How have cities uniquely shaped the way their inhabitants play, and how has play in turn shaped the built environment, the social dynamics, and the politics of cities?

By Marc Stein The following text is reprinted with permission from Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein, published by The University of Chicago Press. © 2026 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. When the PBC board met on October 23 at the Penn Mutual Building to vote on its bicentennial plan, racial conflicts exploded anew.

By David J. Goodwin The young writer hunched over their desk in a cramped apartment, the morose poet scribbling in a notebook in a cafe, the frustrated playwright buttonholing a producer on the sidewalk, the cynical journalist waiting for a source in a seedy bar—men and women of letters belong to the narratives of cities embedded in the public imagination and immortalized across various artistic media.

By Dan Holland The passage of Pittsburgh’s first fair housing law in 1958, the second in the nation, and  Pennsylvania’s in 1961 (also among the first statewide fair housing laws in the nation), were rare civil rights victories at a time when record numbers of African Americans were being relocated under the federal urban renewal program. The passage of these laws represented a colossal organizing effort over many years.

This is the eight and final post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Andrew Watson In July 1896, Chicora, Oliver Mowat, and Ann Brown docked at Toronto Harbour. Each had come from a different corner of Lake Ontario bearing food, fuel, and building materials for the city.

This is the seventh post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Sara B. Pritchard Ryan Reft’s recent photograph, “Sorrento Italy at night” (Figure 1), opened the Network in Canadian History and Environment and Urban History Association Call for Papers on “Urban and Environmental Dialogues,” of which this essay is one contribution.

This is the sixth post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Yohad Zacarías S. Between 1920 and 1930, the Chilean Electric Company Limited, Santiago Municipality, and the Chilean government built 100 electric substations to transmit and distribute electrical power throughout Chile’s capital city.

This is the fifth post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By John Bessai  I used to study cities through their official monuments, statues and commemorative plaques. In the process, I started to understand cities through natural elements, including stones, floodlines, buried rivers, and tree canopies, which contain historical information within their environments.

This is the fourth post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By C…

Call for Student Applications University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OhioThursday, October 15, 2026Applications due: March 1, 2026 The Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH…

This is the third post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Sa…

Sidewalks mark the aesthetic line between nature and civilization. They are the city’s environmental hinge, mediating between natural forces and social ideals of a civilized order. Through Chicago’…

With sea levels rising, with flooding and storm surge becoming more intense and more frequent, our coastal cities are on the front line—literally—of the effects of climate change. But not only have…

There’s a lot I don’t know about what 2026 (or today) might bring, but I can promise you this: the #ScholarSunday threads will continue! Here’s my 257th of public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, ...

“We, we got ourselvesGonna sing it, gonna love it, gonnawork it out to any lengthDon’t worry, no worry, aboutwhat the people sayWe got ourselves, we gonna make it anywayYou! You can’t hurt meWhy? I…

Here it is, the final regular #ScholarSunday thread of 2025, my 255th thread of great public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please sha...

[Editor’s note: To read our other selections for Best of 2025, see here] Media comes at us so fast nowadays, and along with the fragmentation of culture that has accompanied the increasing pa…

[Editor’s note: To read our other selections for Best of 2025, see here] Media comes at us so fast nowadays, and along with the fragmentation of culture that has accompanied the increasing pa…