How cities work, who they serve, and who decides. We investigate zoning reform, transit equity, missing-middle housing, highway removal, plaza design, shade policy, and the democratic systems that govern urban space. From parking mandates to participatory budgeting, infrastructure is political architecture.
5 articles

Why America Can't Build Anymore
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.
September 22, 2025
The Shade Treaty
A solarpunk blueprint for America's hottest century—rights, rules, and the civic art of lowering the temperature. Here is the short version of the century: heat is no longer a season; it is a governance problem. In 2023, the U.S. recorded 2,325 heat-related deaths—the highest in the 1999–2023.
August 4, 2025
The Right to Shade
How a Spanish-American heat commons can save lives, redesign streets, and teach the republic courtesy. The map of summer is a moral document. It shows where trees stand, where pavements glare, where bus shelters exist because someone cared enough to draw a roof.
July 31, 2025
How to Fix a Broken Country, One Bridge at a Time
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),.
July 28, 2025
New Orleans and the Cities That Could Have Been
Cities are usually born of stubbornness or luck; New Orleans was born of geometry. A kink in the Mississippi offered a natural levee and a commanding bend—close enough to the Gulf to smell salt, far enough upriver to dodge the worst of the waves. That curve made the city a hinge between the.
June 19, 2025