The Grand Union Canal, or G.U.C., is a 137-mile-long, 220-year-old man-made channel of once purely functional water. It is now long relieved of its original vocation of channeling industrialised loads of coal and aggregates between the great smoking behemoths of London and Birmingham. Now only leisure narrowboats and lightweight cruisers chug down it, their pilotsContinue Reading 12 Arches, 13 Apostles: The Liminal Wealth of the Grand Union Canal

The Reading Viaduct, which once carried trains above Philadelphia’s urban core, has no purpose. It is abandoned. Yet its size and location in the heart of a major American city has stirred imaginings of a different kind of place, one that will be the opposite of what it is now. In fact, plans have beenContinue Reading Philadelphia’s Reading Viaduct as Heterotopia

It was a cloudy May morning and I had to figure out what to do about the fence. Three strands of smooth wire, spanning the width of the meadow. Easy enough to slip under, but was it electrified? Did the eight head of cattle, black and white, lazing in the grass, need that level ofContinue Reading The Way to Build a Better Road Is to Cover It with Dirt: The Goat Path, Part I

Staten Island, New York January 20, 2020 “So, can you tell us what the story is here?” Sonja asks. I’ve been thinking about how to introduce this quest. It’s Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Since Friday, among other New Yorky outings we’ve toured Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Central Park, and the New Museum. Today isContinue Reading Where a Beach Town Once Was: Phragmites, a Lonesome Pier, and Entering the Managed Retreat Era