Cosmopolis

Mapping the Metropolis: Call for Submissions

2016-05-25T23:32:00.000-04:00

Coldnoon invites you to one of the most quintessential journeys, a whole new segment called the Coldnoon Cities. As part of our journal, we would hence be publishing writings which talk about experiences, histories, literatures, people, stories and odds and ends of metropolitan cities. Each quartet of cities will run for about six months, and selected writings from the online journal will be republished in print. The first of these quartets — chosen over geographically, politically and culturally diverse locations — is London/Lahore/Cairo/Calcutta.

For more, see: Mapping the Metropolis: Call for Submissions

In praise of dirty, sexy cities: the urban world according to Walter Benjamin

2015-09-22T07:32:00.000-04:00

Seventy five years after his death, the Marxist philosopher’s passion for the seedier, messier delights of cities such as Marseille and Moscow are a stark reminder of how sanitised today’s urban environment is becoming

For more, see Stuart Jeffries' In praise of dirty, sexy cities: the urban world according to Walter Benjamin

David Harvey: The Right to the City and Urban Resistance

2015-03-29T17:00:00.003-04:00

Delhi Birds: Aerial views of the national capital, through smog and sunshine

2015-01-31T15:03:00.001-05:00

"Delhi Birds: Aerial views of the national capital, through smog and sunshine" By Robert Stephens

More than 25% of Delhi's bird population consists of migrants, as does 43% of its human population. Both have the same aspirations: food security and growth opportunities for oneself and family.

Chicago's Disappearing Public Housing

2015-01-13T06:04:00.000-05:00

A Photo essay on the disappearing of public housing in Chicago. Text by David Eads and Helga Salinas and photos by Patricia Evans

Demolished: The End of Chicago's Public Housing: http://apps.npr.org/lookatthis/posts/publichousing/

Countries with a Smaller Population than Tokyo

2015-01-11T21:43:00.002-05:00

How Parks Gentrify Neighborhoods, And How To Stop It

2014-11-03T23:31:00.001-05:00

"Just green enough" might be just the tool to overcome such challenges. The basic idea is that not every sustainable design project need be a market-driven concept that favors new residents to native populations. Instead of a grand waterfront plaza dotted with high-end boutiques and LEED-certified towers, a "just green enough" strategy might emphasize small-scale community gardens or basic environmental cleanup. If a bigger project does make sense, it should at least incorporate local input and protect local culture.

For more, see: How Parks Gentrify Neighborhoods, And How To Stop It

1950s Hong Kong Captured in Street Photography by Fan Ho

2014-08-29T07:57:00.000-04:00

Critically acclaimed Chinese photographer Fan Ho spent the 1950s and 60s taking gritty and darkly beautiful photos of street life in Hong Kong. His photographs, to be published in his new book “Fan Ho: A Hong Kong Memoir“, reach back through time and space to connect us to the everyday sights of this bustling metropolis in a way that many of us have never seen before.

For more, see: 1950s Hong Kong Captured in Street Photography by Fan Ho

Philip Webb's 'Homeless Lives in American Cities' now available

2014-08-10T12:08:00.000-04:00

My history of the study of homelessness in the U.S. is now available. Homeless Lives in American Cities: Interrogating Myth and Locating Community explores how the American discourse on homelessness arose from Victorian social and political anxieties about the impacts of immigration and urbanization on the middle class family. These anxieties were negotiated by social activists and service providers, as well as those commenting on their work - journalists, sociologists, and finally policymakers. It examines the stories told by all such invested parties, paying careful attention to the ways in which they described and diagnosed social problems before they developed institutions to redress them. In doing so, Homeless Lives explains how their descriptive modes of portraying urban life shaped subsequent social science and policy. It analyzes how religious language and images codified representations of urban problems, and through this process, explores how contemporary urban sociology, social work, and policy emerge from Victorian cultural attitudes about gender, class, the family, the city, and social life.

"Philip Webb's work on homelessness is innovative and original, bringing attention to a subject that was once popular (from roughly the late 1980s—the late 1990s) and has now faded into obscurity in important respects. Webb seeks not merely to update the older literature but to critically analyze it in terms of its narrow definitions and foci." - Kathleen Arnold, Professor of Political science, DePaul University, USA

Philip Webb's books on Goodreads

Homeless Lives in American Cities: Interrogating Myth and Locating Community

David Harvey & Andy Merrifield in conversation - Birkbeck, University of London, April 2014

2014-05-10T11:09:00.003-04:00

The Birdman and his Rainbow Music to Close in the East Village

2014-03-10T19:07:00.001-04:00

Stranded in Atlanta's Food Deserts - Features - Atlanta Magazine

2014-03-06T18:32:00.001-05:00

In Atlanta, the ninth-biggest metropolis of the world’s richest country, thousands of people can’t get fresh food, and some are getting sick—even dying—as a result. Which raises a simple question: Why can we build multimillion-dollar highway systems and multibillion-dollar stadiums but not more grocery stores? If we can build a museum dedicated to a soft drink and one that celebrates college football and another that trumpets civil rights, can’t we help Emma and Charles Davis with what seems to be a most essential and basic right: putting an affordable and healthy dinner on the table?

Stranded in Atlanta's Food Deserts - Features - Atlanta Magazine

Singapore named the world's most expensive city

2014-03-03T21:46:00.001-05:00

Singapore has topped 131 cities globally to become the world's most expensive city to live in 2014, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, and Boston--American Cities with the Greatest Inequality

2014-02-20T10:02:00.000-05:00

Inequality may be the result of global economic forces, but it matters in a local sense. A city where the rich are very rich, and the poor very poor, is likely to face many difficulties. It may struggle to maintain mixed-income school environments that produce better outcomes for low-income kids. It may have too narrow a tax base from which to sustainably raise the revenues necessary for essential city services. And it may fail to produce housing and neighborhoods accessible to middle-class workers and families, so that those who move up or down the income ladder ultimately have no choice but to move out.

For more, see Alan Berube's All Cities Are Not Created Unequal

Peter Bradshaw's Top 10 Future Cities in Film

2014-02-15T19:41:00.000-05:00

METROPOLIS (1927) (dir. Fritz Lang)
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) (dir. John Carpenter)
LOGAN’S RUN (1976) (dir. Michael Anderson)
BLADE RUNNER (1982) (dir. Ridley Scott)
ALPHAVILLE (1965) (dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
THINGS TO COME (1936) (dir. William Cameron Menzies)
AKIRA (1988) (dir. Katsuhiro Otomo)
SLEEPER (1973) (dir. Woody Allen)
MINORITY REPORT (2002) (dir. Steven Spielberg)
BABELDOM (2013) (dir. Paul Bush)

For Bradshaw's discussions of these films, see The Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge.

Scaling the Second Tallest Building in the World

2014-02-13T18:30:00.000-05:00

This Woman Took a Picture of Every Prague Subway Station in Just One Day

2014-02-13T16:53:00.001-05:00

This Woman Took a Picture of Every Prague Subway Station in Just One Day

Indian drivers urged to stop honking horns

2014-02-09T02:11:00.000-05:00

Train Crash in Nairobi's Kibera

2013-12-22T08:58:00.001-05:00

Several people have been injured after a freight train crashed into homes in the sprawling Nairobi slum of Kibera, reports from Kenya say.
The train derailed while passing through the slum - one of Africa's largest - on its way to Uganda.
Kenya's Red Cross has tweeted to say scores of people are feared trapped in their damaged homes.

For more, see the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25483720

Kolkata Tries to Reduce Traffic in the Worst Possible Way

2013-10-17T22:35:00.001-04:00

If you’ve ever been to India, you know how crazy the traffic can be. Every type of vehicle fights for space on roads that seem to have little or no organizing principle. Buses, bicycles, livestock, trucks, three-wheel taxis, motorcycles, rickshaws, and anything else that moves battle it out in a life-threatening scrum.
Now the city of Kolkata, population 14 million, has decided to do something about it. Something that, quite frankly, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
City officials recently decided to prohibit people from using bicycles on nearly 200 streets in central Kolkata during the day – this in spite of the reality that bikes are the primary mode of transport for 11 percent of the city’s people, who make 2.5 million trips on two wheels each day. In contrast, cars are used by 8 percent of Kolkata’s citizens. The rest use public transportation or travel on foot.

Kolkata Tries to Reduce Traffic in the Worst Possible Way

You are listening to Atlanta

2013-08-25T09:42:00.000-04:00

Ambient music and police scanners from your favorite cities.
http://youarelistening.to/atlanta

Visualization of the Day: New York City's Wealth Gap, Mapped In 3D

2013-08-17T09:50:00.001-04:00

Visualization of the Day: New York City's Wealth Gap, Mapped In 3D

This is Shanghai

2013-07-17T19:47:00.004-04:00

Seen on the Urbanophile.

The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Metros

2013-07-09T22:08:00.001-04:00

Hour's rain sinks south Kolkata

2013-06-20T22:49:00.000-04:00

An hour's rain disrupted a large part of south Kolkata on Thursday afternoon though other parts of the city received remained mostly dry. The situation laid bare the ill-preparedness of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation in tackling peak-monsoon waterlogging. The civic bosses on Thursday looked helpless as the water did not recede from some areas even in the evening, Rashbehari Avenue, Chetla, Dhakuria, Jodhpur Park, Southern Avenue, Gariahat Road, Ballygunge Circular Road and Gurusaday Dutt Road were the worst hit. Residents of these areas had to wade through knee-deep water, thanks to clogged drains and malfunctioning pumps at Ballygunge drainage pumping station.

For more, see: Hour's rain sinks south Kolkata