Luck saved me from dying on North Lombard. Portlanders need a better solution.

/ Articles, Writing /

Published in the Sunday Oregonian, December 17th, 2023 About a year ago, I contacted Portland City Commissioner Mingus Mapps’ office about how dangerous the intersection of North Lombard Street and North Mississippi Avenue is. The city already knows Lombard poses considerable hazards – the transportation bureau designated the street as the third deadliest in Portland for traffic […]

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What I’m Reading, Vol. IV

/ What I'm Reading /

No surprises here – it’s mostly architecture and urbanism books. But wait! There’s a novel and a biography in there too. If you want to jump ahead, just click a link. This installment covers Walkable City by Jeff Speck, Strong Towns by Charles Marohn, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, A Song for Nagasaki by

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The Radiant City

/ Essays, Writing /
Fascist rally for Benito Mussolini at Piazza San Marco in Venice

Le Corbusier’s influential vision of totalitarian architecture has never coexisted with organic human reality. No single person — no elected official, designer, planner, architect or style-setter — has had a more profound effect on the built environment worldwide than the Swiss-French architect and city planner Le Corbusier. His buildings litter the covers of books and

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The Gospel of Architecture

/ Essays, Writing /

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” With these famous words, Winston Churchill argued that the House of Commons, destroyed during the Blitz, should be rebuilt according to its original design. The rectangular design of the building, he claimed—in which the opposing sides had to sit facing each other, and changing “sides” meant literally

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Behind the Black Umbrellas

/ Articles, Writing /

The direct action at the Democrats’ building lasted less than ten minutes. The police were nowhere in sight. But as the group began to wind back toward the park, a number of officers arrived on bicycles. They followed for several blocks, then closed in in the middle of an intersection, arresting three men. Activists yelled at the police, asking why the men were being arrested. A moment later a man shouted, “Everyone scatter – let’s go!” “Be water,” said others, and the group dissolved into side streets.

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