I spent five days in Venice with my family, thanks to Professor Balbo’s hospitality. As numerous writers have pointed out, Venice is unlike any other city in the world. The first, obvious point is that all the major routes are … Continue reading
[note: I shot and posted these pictures in 2007, but I never had a chance to build the web-pages to show them. At that time I used Mozilla and FTP to create and manage my pages, so it took far … Continue reading
This is the most important single page of images for my students at Kabul University. There are many paths to a modern city, both physically and institutionally. What these images show is a city of extremely narrow streets, similar to … Continue reading
Those of you who are following these webpages know that I am focused on post-war urban reconstruction and political-economic development. And I think Franz Fanon and Desmond Tutu describe the critical steps necessary to get beyond a condition of war: … Continue reading
The Turkish Cultural Center is the building in the middle. It is very (post)modern, but it fits into the urban fabric extremely well, in part because it makes several comments about the adjacent fabric. I believe this is another new … Continue reading
The streets of Sarajevo The first eight photographs on this page are of streets in eastern, older Sarajevo. Larisa was curious about my reaction to Sarajevo. Coming from Kabul, my impression is that it is definitely a European city, reminiscent … Continue reading
From Istanbul I flew Turkish Air to Sarajevo, the cultural heart of Bosnia. Larisa Kurtovic and I were both graduate student instructors for Michael Watts last fall. She is a PhD student in Anthropology at Berkeley which means that she … Continue reading
Galata Galata is an urban district on the north shore of the Golden Horn. It was developed in the high middle ages by the Genoese as a trading colony adjacent to Constantinople. This is one of the first buildings I … Continue reading
Sultan Ahmet mosque A big, urban, Friday mosque. Mehmet Pasha mosque A more intimate, neighborhood-serving mosque Suleymaniye mosque Another monumental mosque, further back (west) in the city Beyazid moque … Continue reading
Topkapi Palas After walking around the neighborhood near my hotel I walked down to the waterfront and then back up through the old walls to the backside of the Hagia Sofiya. There is a beautiful Ottoman pavilion there, and then … Continue reading