“Reading the City,” the late 2012 column from urbanist Allison Arieff, is stuck in my head.

Arieff’s year-end piece for The New York Times described with style and subtle irony how she escaped a “smart city” conference in Barcelona, and explored the urban spaces around her, armed with only a conventional map. She ended her column with a recommended reading list of books that tell stories about cities. The kind of stories that happen outside of conference halls — experiential, first-hand stories.

…….

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Image composed by the author.