• 8th annual Better Cities Film Festival screens in Detroit

    Unique annual film festival spotlights the world’s most inspiring stories about making cities, towns and neighborhoods better places for everyone.
    First+Main Films will be screening the 2022 Better Cities Film Festival on October 20 - 23 in Detroit, Michigan. The festival curates and exhibits the best films from around the world, all focused on the theme of making cities and towns better places to live, work and play. The 8 th edition of the...Read more

  • How place and prosperity interact

    William Fulton combines the sharp eye of a journalist, the objective rigor of an academic, and the practical experience of a leader in a book of urban essays, Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us Connect and Innovate.
    Ages ago, Saint Augustine juxtaposed the City of God and the City of Man. For the past forty years, Bill Fulton has been striving to reconcile the two. The heavenly city exists only as an ideal. The patron saint of contemporary urbanism, Jane Jacobs, described the earthly city as “organized...Read more

  • Washington Drawings: Abe to Zoo

    Dhiru A. Thadani has produced an illustrative book that is full of insights into the people, places, history, and urbanism of our nation’s capital.
    Dhiru A. Thadani has a unique knowledge of Washington, DC. Prior to the Internet and Google maps, Thadani led a group of volunteers on a 13-year effort, starting in the 1970s, to exactly draw the footprint of buildings and public spaces of the nation’s capital. This plan, based on the famous 1748...Read more

  • Visions of the city: I is for Ice

    Amid the recent oppressive heat wave, it may be hard to imagine when warmth feels good. But there comes a time when people put on hats and gloves and scarves and engage in outdoor activities to generate body heat, and the contrast with the cold is invigorating. The drawing above, by architect and...Read more