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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City

@thefoxandthecity.com

1.7K followers 300 following 3.7K posts

The world-famous urban theorist who…wait, this has to be honest‽ Independent Professional Urbanist and Writer, creating in-depth critiques of urban spaces, places, & systems. My work: thefoxandthecity.com Also ED @etany.org She/her

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · Aug 25

For all the attention urbanism has gotten in recent years, urbanism as a field of study has often languished.

In my latest essay, I seek to define urbanism, explore what makes it different, and correct misconceptions about what it's not.

thefoxandthecity.com/articles/urb...

Urbanism as a Field of Study | The Fox and the City

For all the attention urbanism has gotten over recent years, the study of cities for their own sake has often languished—and might even risk being defined out of existence. With apologies to Louis Wir...

tinyurl.com

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 5h

This, conversely, I almost find interesting in an anthropological sense.

Eg "Look at people buying the evening paper for their commute home!"

m.youtube.com/watch?v=qWlc...

Commuting on the Erie Lackawanna, 1964

YouTube video by Speed Graphic Film and Video

m.youtube.com

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 5h

This is true.

So close, and yet...

m.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4l...

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 5h

We have to leave some decisions up to the architect, of course. They tend to be passionate people.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 5h

Tired shower thought:

"Terracotta cladding has fallen out of favor. We need something new. How about panna cotta cladding?"

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 6h

We call this the "Charlie Syndrome"

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

On the one, happy birthday!

On the other, as @norton.bsky.social explored so thoroughly, Mr. McLintock's ideas of traffic safety were mostly all about ensuring space for fast car travel.

UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies @uclaits.bsky.social · 1d

🎉 Happy 100th birthday to transportation research at UCLA! 100 years ago today, the UC regents voted to establish the nation's first research center dedicated to street traffic issues. Learn more about our century-long tradition of transportation research www.its.ucla.edu/100...

Black-and-white newspaper clipping from the Los Angeles Times in 1925 with the headline “Research in Traffic for University: Studebaker Grant Gives Southern Branch First Bureau in Country.” The article announces the establishment of the first university-based street traffic research bureau at the Southern Branch of the University of California (now UCLA). A small portrait photo of Miller McClintock, the bureau’s first director, appears in the lower half of the article.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

Happy Frank Pepe Day!

(An Italian-American hero we can all get behind)

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

To my Canadian friends and family, happy Thanksgiving!

To my transborder friends, happy (first) Thanksgiving!

And of course, to all my friends and family in the States...

A Canadian flag blowing in the wind set against bright orange leaves

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

I was just going to say "state of good repair"

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Small world: was there a couple months ago.

Me in front of a "Welcome to Delaware" sign at the Biden Welcome Center

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Urban inspired activity center

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 5d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

There are a number of places I visit where I far prefer staying in AirBnBs because they are located in real urban neighborhoods, while all the hotels are located in a CBD that is dead at night.

A result of regulations that ban hotels from normal places people might want to be.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

🦊🎬

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Isn't that more Varick? (I know that's one in the same).

I'm more thinking through the Village, but maybe my tired brain is more mixing just how much you can see the scars of construction.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Subway was obviously worth it, of course, from the beginning.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Spicy take: it took the better part of a century for 7th Ave South (not all the places around it, but the street proper) to really develop, and it still feels like more of a car sewer than, say, Lafayette.

(I'm not sure how much I stand behind it, this is a very tired take)

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

This is a great list! Largely think you're right on.

I think the most interesting to plumb is point one. Canada certainly has a lot of the anti-urban beliefs that permeate the Anglosphere, but they never metastisized in the same way as they did in the States.

The hinge of history and all that.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

My (old) take on what the urban is, broken down into four categories.

thefoxandthecity.com/articles/the...

One day I should rewrite this to add what I think is a critical factor: the public realm.

The Question of the Urban

What is urbanity? To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, urbanity can seem like pornography: we can't define it, but we know it when we see it. But there is much to learn by unpacking what urbanity act...

thefoxandthecity.com

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Super fascinating chart!

Lots of good stuff, but also more credence to my continual argument that density does not necessarily mean urban.

(This is not a slam on the Canadian cities on this list as much as the US ones)

bsky.app/profile/relu...

Marcus P. @reluctantaxe.bsky.social · 2d

A Redditor made a graph of the percent of population of US and Canada metro areas over 1 million that live in a given density. When they ordered them by average density the lowest ranked Canadian metro area, Edmonton, was ranked 14th between Miami and Washington. 6 of the top 15 were Canadian metros

Graph of Canada and US metro areas with a breakdown of percentage of people that live in density density bands

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

::laughs::

That's a *great* way of looking at it!

In all honesty, I love airports, love spending time in them. Good ones, anyway.

But man, that one time I had to spend 11 hours at the non-Delta terminal at DTW was too much even for me.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

YYZ sunset

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

As someone who has done this too much: I think it's better to be stuck here than YUL for a long time, but not by much.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Goddamn it, writing that book was my backup plan!

(In all honesty thanks for that suggestion. Been thinking that some day I might dive deep in the historical differences between US and Canadian cities. Depends on where life takes me right now).

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Is the future of urban North America in Canada?

(I'm sure someone will hit me with a good argument about Mexico, which I could also believe)

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 3d

also rapidly urbanizing (1.8k->2.4k->3k over the last 40 years) in a way the US is not (1.8k->2k->2.2k)

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Freedom f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶s̶o̶g̶g̶y̶ ̶b̶o̶t̶t̶o̶m̶s̶!!!