Archive
Browse all 10 articles across governance, urban systems, ecologies, and latitudes.
The Care Grid: Treating Childcare and Eldercare as Infrastructure
Every city has a network you can't point to on a map. It runs under the hours of the day, not the streets. Treat care as a grid—with uptime targets, dispatch rules, and capacity planning—not as weather.
The Cities That Forgot Water: When Drainage Becomes Drowning
Cities built to shed water now face repeated floods and heat stress. This essay argues for pragmatic, equitable urban hydrology: hybrid grey‑green systems, watershed governance, and policy tools that protect people and repair past planning choices.
The Neighborhoods That Burn First: How Heat Islands Map Inequality
Cities are becoming furnaces. This essay traces how design, policy, and inequality create urban heat islands and proposes pragmatic, equity‑first interventions—shade, water, surface albedo, zoning reform, and community stewardship—to cool the most vulnerable neighborhoods.
Vetocracy: Why America Can't Build
Every empire tells time with its roads. Rome had milestones; we have press releases. In 2021, Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—a vault of money large enough to make accountants need a hammock. The numbers are real; the cranes are not imaginary.
The Rebuild: Infrastructure as Redistribution
What America's infrastructure actually looks like in 2025—three places, four programs, one honest ledger. We like to pretend infrastructure is a sequence of ribbon cuttings—the pure joy of scissors through satin. In reality, it's a ledger written in three inks: authorizations (Congress),.
When Utilities Choose Governors
How physical systems—pipelines, grids, cables—shape political realities in American cities and define the geography of governance.
Green Infrastructure: When Nature Does the Work
Rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs—cities are rediscovering that natural systems can outperform engineered ones. This essay traces the science, governance, and equitable practice of green infrastructure and offers concrete steps for designers, planners, and officials.
The Archive: Spanish Records Prove Native Claims
Building the bilingual memory infrastructure the United States forgot it needed. A country that cannot search its past will mis-govern its future. Ours keeps half its memory in another language—acequia minutes, merced deeds, mission ledgers, notarial protocols, diseños, parish censuses—a.
Blueprints and Blockades: Latin America's Planning Wins—and the Times They Were Stopped
Latin America did not lack planners or plans. It lacked uninterrupted time. Over the last century, the region produced sophisticated projects in transport, health, energy, and social protection. Many took root and quietly improved daily life. Others were intercepted—often by U.S.
Breaking the Monopolies: Árbenz, the Atlantic Corridor, and the Coup That Rewrote Guatemala
Jacobo Árbenz did not try to build utopia. He tried to build a country that could set its own prices. His program—land reform backed by logistics—attacked the chokepoints that kept Guatemala poor: a foreign‑owned port, a foreign‑owned railway, and idle estates that treated peasants as labor.