Homesteading in Soulard, St. Louis
Soulard today is seen as one of St. Louis’s most vibrant neighborhoods. It has gained residents while the city’s population has fallen. However, it remains the exception to how the city pursues redevelopment.
Art and Radicalism in St. Louis
Trump’s election was just one of a global turn rightward. Anti-democratic, illiberal, proto-fascist political movements were gaining ground internationally. Even still, eight years later, the Midwest and the Rust Belt are regarded as at the center and engine of the neo-reactionary and radical right-wing movements today.
On Picking Apples in the Lower Midwest
Supposedly, it all started with an apple. In the beginning was the garden, the serpent, the woman—and “those fair apples,” as Milton writes in Paradise Lost. That was the beginning, or perhaps the beginning of the end.
Phantom Phone in St. Louis
Living without a smartphone in a smartphone world.
St. Louis Brick by Brick
To understand the history of St. Louis’s bricks is to unearth systems of power, economy, dispossession, decline, and manifest destiny; the storybook decorative brickwork we see today becomes a tale as complex—and as sinister—as American history itself.
Unlocking the Gateway to the West
My city has also not been particularly adept at acknowledging its sins, past or present, let alone attempting to atone for them.
The Cracked Wonder of Cementland
If the City Museum was a tribute to industrial repurposing, Cementland was meant to be its pinnacle.
St. Louis’ Wealthy “King of the Hobos”
“By the hoboes, for the hoboes, of the hoboes.”
How Some Communities are Monitoring Their Own Air Quality
In Ohio, local advocacy groups are using low-cost sensors to gather information.
Climate Emergency and Environmental Justice in the Rust Belt
Stories on climate change, industrial legacies, and planning for a just future.
Black Freedom, Black Joy: A Juneteenth Reading List
Honoring Black joy and freedom struggles in the Rust Belt.
“A City Upon a Hill”
In 1993, the Mississippi River destroyed the town of Valmeyer, Illinois. So residents moved it a mile uphill.