I write to think in public and to be challenged by the people who build, finance, and govern cities. I publish most often at Field Discovery, the Field States publication I founded and edit. My books, essays and op-eds are below; peer-reviewed work is on the Research page of this site.
I have done several curatorial writing projects, turning divergent perspectives toward a common topic. In 2019, Sidewalk Labs’ plan for Toronto’s waterfront was flattening the urban technology discourse into unproductive binaries and taglines. In response, I co-edited Some Thoughts with Bianca Wylie, Nasma Ahmed, Zahra Ebrahim and Christopher Pandolfi. We gathered 73 contributions and organized them into boisterous and enlightening “tables” – as if we were hosting a dinner party for applied civic discourse.
At the start of the pandemic I guest-edited Provisions, a special issue of The Site Magazine with pieces by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Audrey Tang, Xiaowei Wang, Elke Krasny, and many others. In my editor’s letter I wrote that “we are all inhaling what others exhale, and—whether we like it or not—the future we will inhabit is a common one.”
I frequently give practitioner-oriented talks and academic lectures. Recently, speaking has been an opportunity for me to test and refine the concept of Adaptive Urbanism.
