Goodbye, January Of Crowded Rooms
Cruel January took from my world two extraordinary people; an appreciation of them and their defiant urban spaces
View ArticleThe Pretense Of Ornament
This week, we began to search for images of Philly's golden age of jazz, the 1940s-1960s, and so far we've found almost nothing in the archives. But then most of that world is gone--eviscerated....
View ArticleStupid, Lazy, And Cruel
The Affordable Care Act would expand Medicaid coverage to some 750,000 uninsured Philadelphians, including so many who work in journalism, photography, technology, and the arts, but Governor Tom...
View ArticleThree Weeks Of Winter Is Over And We’re Hungry For Stories
Send us your story ideas today!
View ArticleDeath By A Thousand Curb Cuts
Since he moved into the neighborhood in 1998, says Nathaniel Popkin, dozens of private garages, which act as a repellant to street life, have been built. Now two more near the corner of Eight and South...
View ArticleBody Count
Having failed once to stop a completely unjustifiable curb cut for a garage last month, Nathaniel Popkin has learned: forget principles of the new zoning code, the only thing that matters to the Zoning...
View ArticleThe Possible City, 1838
At the Painted Bride starting tomorrow a PIFA production that explores the urgent lives of white and African-American women who formed the Female Anti-Slavery Society and whose work exploded in the...
View ArticleOnly Temporary?
All across the city, we've come to rely on temporary interventions. Is this merely an honest approach or evidence of shrunken expectations?
View ArticleStarting Tomorrow, We’re Making Our Point
This really is a big, complicated city; now let's get out and experience it
View ArticleAnything Can Happen
Our relationship to the city is always evolving, in Nathaniel Popkin's case, a process aided and abetted by the Hidden City Festival
View ArticleGlimpses Of The Holy Land
A traveler can only gather fleeting impressions, says Nathaniel Popkin
View ArticleDreamtime In The Possible City
With the weather changing as it was last night, Nathaniel Popkin finds himself traveling--much farther than the confines of Center City
View ArticlePainfully Ugly, But Does It Matter?
Everyone knows the city's new hotel, a Home2 Suites at 12th and Arch, is an architectural mess. Do other factors make up for it? Nathaniel Popkin explores the corporate mindset (and gets kicked out of...
View ArticleYour Lines, Imagined
We all dream of subway lines, says Nathaniel Popkin. Tell us yours
View ArticleInside A Stone Castle, They Wish To Throw Up More Bricks
Mother Bethel and Society Hill Civic Association protest a proposed new development for "not fitting in." Nathaniel Popkin wonders if this isn't a double standard
View ArticleA Story In Letters
A chance realization leads to this meditation on neighborhood change by Nathaniel Popkin
View ArticlePVM, RIP
Few could dream the possible city as well as Paul vanMeter, the landscape gardener and founder of ViaductGreene, who died suddenly Thursday. Nathaniel Popkin's tribute
View ArticleOn Revolution Museum, Readers Have Spoken
Signees of the "Declaration of Architectural Independence" had a lot to say about the proposed design for the Museum
View ArticleHow Can You Know What It Means To Be Here
What explains the power of place, of Fairmount Park especially, to give meaning to our lives? Nathaniel Popkin on three writers drawn to the park, including the great poet Stephen Berg, who died 12...
View ArticleHow Spruce Street Harbor Park Succeeds
In a city of squandered opportunities, here's an intervention that transforms the way we interact with space--and the city. Nathaniel Popkin reviews the new Spruce Street Harbor Park, opening tomorrow
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