A change of heart

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: psychological and spiritual transformation. In the long run these internal, personal changes are what show […]

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Conflict and modernity

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 cultural center (Larisa please verify). The entry pavilion obviously refers back to Ottoman ablution-fountains, but

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Sarajevo

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 is the social science equivalent of a rocket scientist. She wanted me to visit Sarajevo

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Galata and the Airport

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 encountered when I crossed the Galata bridge. Pretty obviously Italian in its design; but does

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Three mosques

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

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Istanbul

July 6 through 9, 2007 My mission in Istanbul was to get images of urban development as examples for Afghan planners and architects. I mentioned on the July 7 post how it was strange to arrive in Istanbul ‘from the east’; another reason for this is that I was looking for images of Istanbul for

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Five cities, four weeks

During the spring of 2007 I taught at both Kabul University and Kabul Polytechnic. Both at these universities and in the municipality, students and planners alike are trying to envision the future path of urban development for Kabul and all of Afghanistan’s cities. During my inter-semester break I am visiting several cities to gather images

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Paying respects for the dead

24 June 2007 / 3 Saratan 1386 On June 17, a bomb placed in a police academy bus exploded while the bus was parked in a busy area just outside of the public gate of the Police Commandery. Thirty-five people were killed including twenty-four police officers and eleven bystanders. The next day (Aug 18) as

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