The end of the century of privacy
Reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War has made me think more about the unique nature of urban civilization of the long 20th-century. The expansion of public health, in particular provision of clean water, meant that for the first time in the history of the […]
The revival of the American city?
I’ve never watched Mad Men, but I really can’t help but hear all about the show. One thing that has struck me about the change from then, ~1960, to now, ~2010, is the alignment of quantitative demographic trends with impressionistic cultural ones. The 1970s were a disaster for the old urban order. Below are the […]