In Oakland, California, when it comes to Black homelessness and dispossession, dystopia is already here.

What happens when your neighborhood, your city, seem to have lost their way?

How the “genial Bavarian” version of Adolf Hitler became a global media celebrity, “a plain-living gentleman with a soft spot for dogs and children.”

Shanghai, in 1989 and 2013. Excerpted from A History of Future Cities.

An impossible hike in Western China.

“I turned to see Eva padding around the room, naked, dipping a small plastic wand into the bottle of bubble soap she’d bought at the market… Sometime in the far future, when I was lying on my deathbed, I said, this was the moment I wanted to remember.”

On the relationship between travel and photography.

An essay on craft, excerpted from Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities.

On the evolving design and industrialization of the American outdoors.

When (temporary) cities swell; a short history of the Burning Man festival.