Thoughtful journalism on governance, cities, climate, and the Americas.
Latin America did not lack planners or plans. It lacked uninterrupted time. Over the last century, the region produced sophisticated projects in transport, health, energy, and social protection. Many took root and quietly improved daily life. Others were intercepted—often by U.S. power, sometimes by U.S.-based firms—before they could mature.
How physical systems—pipelines, grids, cables—shape political realities in American cities and define the geography of governance.
October 25, 2025
In American Indian law, the most transformative victories seldom arrive with parades. They arrive as sentences: "Congress has not said otherwise." Those sentences depend on an architecture—expert affidavits, maps, ledgers, and a disciplined order of proof—that turns memory into law.
November 14, 2025
Once suffering extraordinarily high violence rates, Medellín remade itself through transit, public libraries, and public-space investments. This essay traces the politics, innovations, ambivalences, and lessons for U.S. cities seeking equitable urban transformation.
October 13, 2025
In the labyrinth of American law, the first wrong turn is often grammatical. Swap a singular for a plural—the President for the People—and a whole architecture shifts by degrees until courthouses feel like vestibules to a single man's will. What opens as error hardens into habit; what begins as advocacy calcifies into allegiance.
November 28
What looks like subtraction is often scorched ground; what looks like reform is frequently a breach of law. Ten months in, DOGE's balance sheet is legible—and the arithmetic of claims versus facts reveals a permanent contest between institutions designed to be slow and appetites designed to perform.
November 23
America's housing crisis, racial segregation, and climate challenges share a common origin: zoning laws written a century ago to exclude and divide.
November 21
A miscut speech, a $5 billion threat, and two resignations: how the BBC crisis reveals the asymmetric warfare against independent media. When power hunts for seams in newsroom armor, every error becomes a hostage situation—and even UK Labour ministers declare the BBC "must change."
November 15
Cities are becoming furnaces. This essay traces how design, policy, and inequality create urban heat islands and proposes pragmatic, equity‑first interventions—shade, water, surface albedo, zoning reform, and community stewardship—to cool the most vulnerable neighborhoods.
November 14
In the museum of code there is a wing where the labels feel like laws. Merchants line up with packages and petitions, and somewhere deep inside the glass, an algorithm arranges who may be seen, which is a form of sovereignty.
November 7
Every city has a network you can't point to on a map. It runs under the hours of the day, not the streets. Treat care as a grid—with uptime targets, dispatch rules, and capacity planning—not as weather.
November 7
The island we now call Haiti and the Dominican Republic did not change hands because monarchs were whimsical. It moved with the tides of European war, sugar profits, and administrative exhaustion. This essay untangles the geography, the names, and the power ledger behind Hispaniola's shifting flags.
November 7
Public transportation is social infrastructure. How we design and fund it determines who can access jobs, education, and opportunity.
November 6