Sublime
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This is counter to much of the efficiency logic of recent decades; witness the growth of super-hospitals, versus more distributed patterns of healthcare. This, despite exemplary work like Stroke Pathways demonstrating the folly of that centralised, efficiency-led thinking.
Medium • 11: Post-traumatic urbanism and radical indigenism
To consider the grounds and context of creating a new kind of city, this essay outlines the fraught history of urban density in the US and abroad, from its stigmatisation by city officials as a mark of poverty and uncleanliness, to its reinvention as an asset for artists and cultural workers in the post-industrial era, and onward to the continued a... See more
Max Holleran • How urban density can make our neighbourhoods better | Aeon Essays
“Gould looked like a bum and lived like a bum,” Mitchell wrote. “He wore castoff clothes, and he slept in flophouses or in the cheapest rooms in cheap hotels. Sometimes he slept in doorways. He spent most of his time hanging out in diners and cafeterias and barrooms in the Village or wandering around the streets or looking up friends and acquaintan... See more
Michael Rosenwald • ‘I wish this guy hadn’t written this book’
So what’s replaced hangouts in the city? In many cases, I’d consider them ersatz third places: establishments that are either too expensive for the average American or apparently designed to disincentivize lingering. Think carefully curated faux dive bars that serve $15 beer-and-shot specials, or parks like New York’s High Line that are built to be... See more
Allie Conti • Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’
How One Man Walked 6,000 Miles Across America’s Largest Metropolis
lithub.com
The light touch of a hairdresser’s hands on one’s scalp, the euphoric energy of a nightclub, huddling with strangers under a shelter in the rain, a spontaneous snowball fight in the street, a daily interaction with a homeless man—such mundane connections, when we closely inhabit the same space, and touch or are touched by others, were nearly lost t... See more
Encounterism
She was one of SF's most decorated chefs. Now she feeds the Tenderloin for free
Rachel Levinsfstandard.com
Then an old man would shuffle in, whisper something to the barman and retire with him into the room behind the bar. He was a cocaine-addict. A moment later he reappeared, raised his hat to all of us with a vague courteous gesture, and shuffled out. The old man had a nervous tic and kept shaking his head all the time, as if saying to Life: No. No. N
... See moreChristopher Isherwood • Goodbye To Berlin
Then there are the Exiles: people who just can't make it any other business,