Death and Life of Great American Cities By Jane Jacobs First published in 1961, Jane Jacobs outlines the reasons for the failure of urban core areas in America and attributes it to the unsustainable sprawl of suburban housing, car-dependent culture, and flawed urban design philosophy based on what she calls Read more…
If you’re heading East towards Yellowstone National Park on the scenic and tricky US-14, then you have to take the time to stop by and touch real dinosaur tracks. Discovered only near the turn of the 21st century, the dinosaur tracks are very well preserved in what used to be Read more…
The Vocation Lectures By Max Weber While not a book in its original format, the bounded text is as influential in the field of social sciences as it was when first delivered as lectures in Munich in the late 1910’s. The lectures consists of two parts: “Science as a Vocation” Read more…
Mall City: Hong Kong’s Dreamworlds of Consumption Edited by Stefan Al With more shopping malls per square kilometre than any other place on Earth, there’s no better place to research the use of retail space than Hong Kong. This was the first book I bought from the Hong Kong University Read more…
In order of height from tallest to littlest, Andrew, Abraham, Casper, Charlie, and I were the closest of buddies from our days in high school. We each went our different ways shortly after graduation, but we always kept in touch and gathered twice every year for old times’ sake. Video Read more…
The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism By Max Weber This controversial piece of work was written at the turn of the 20th century by German philosopher Max Weber. I had the opportunity to read this text in depth when I studied under the direction of Prof. Joshua Derman, Read more…
Cities Without Ground By Adam Frampton, Jonathan Solomon, Clara Wong Between its many contributing authors, one of the core messages I understood from the book was Hong Kong’s lack of a sense of land. Where American and European homeowners would understand that the value of their home was somehow related Read more…
Chemnitz represents two things to me; the love of trying out new exotic experiences, and my amateur fascination with the history of architecture. My first time in Chemnitz lasted just a few hours, but was enough to give me a comprehensive overview of the city’s history. I did the trip Read more…
I didn’t know how high the sky was until I passed over the Rockies, I didn’t know how large the earth was until I got lost in the plains of Minnesota, I didn’t know how empty the sea was until I knelt in the sand on the Atlantic shore. After Read more…
About ten years ago, former US President Barack Obama claimed that women in the US were paid 77 cents on the dollar when compared to men. Soon after, further dissemination of the studies showed that the actual pay gap between the two genders are actually much lower (93 cents on Read more…