Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues in Toronto.
Whether it’s fantastical architecture in Dubai, the branding of ‘creativity’ in Amsterdam city policy or the fixation of modern novels on connecting the sausage and the city, Mat Jalbert’s website Radical Urban Theory has got it. Although it is not frequently updated, RUT has a collection of essays submitted by a range of people including a prof at the City University of New York, the Bank of America and Matt Jalbert himself.
Abigail Shoneboom looks at the use of the sausage as an urban metaphor in Dickens, Sartre, Camus, Dostoevsky and most recently in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. RUT also gives its readers an except from Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream where its authors provide an articulate explanation and short history of sprawl including a look into how it came about.
While RUT approaches cities from a more broad perspective, looking at general trends in specific urban centres, Jalbert’s Le Blog Exuberance takes a more informal approach towards documenting cities. Often beginning with his vivid photos of California buildings and landscapes, Jalbert explores public space issues like architecture, active transportation, the environment, politics, public radio to name a few.
Based in California, the blog is updated several times a month and is an interesting site in the context of Obama’s new country-wide fuel efficiency standards, which are based on California’s continent-leading standards. His blog nicely fleshes out the paradoxes inherent in a state so rich in amazing landscapes and environments and yet so dependent on the car for mobility.
Photo by George Katodrytis
