I got back on the bus yesterday. And it was fine.

It had been 13 months since I road a bus or a train. Ironically — or, to be more accurate, dangerously — the last time I rode on a public transit vehicle was a New York City subway from…

More than 60 years ago, my parents and other townspeople in the small factory city of Auburn, New York, went down to the local ballpark and removed rocks from the field so the town could have a baseball team in the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. Since then, major-league affiliations…

Sitting here in central Houston this week, with no water, spotty internet, and the looming fear that we would lose power and heat, I kept thinking about John Snow.

John Snow, for those of you who aren’t up on your urban history, was the guy who solved the mystery of…

From the hills behind the City Hall in my adopted hometown of Ventura, California, it’s less than 1,000 yards southward to the Pacific Ocean. It’s a constrained piece of topography that, as I have written elsewhere, creates a small urban gem of a downtown: streetscapes, restaurants, stores, offices, residences, parking…

I’ve published a lot of writing in my life, but nothing has ever compared with the outpouring of responses I got to my Medium essay, “Why I Always Associate ‘Born To Run’ With Houston”. Both music and place are powerful drivers of emotional connection, and I guess that’s what makes…

You’ve heard that old cliché that you can always remember where you were when you first heard of a favorite song. …

When I posted my essay about urban renewal in my hometown of Auburn, N.Y., …

Every minute of every day, every single person is immersed in what we typically call “place”.

We are always situated in a particular location — our home, our car, our workplace, the places we typically shop, our church or other place of worship — and most often these are the…