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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 1h

Arriving @ #UHA2025LA today, need a ride & want to save a buck?

If you're flying into LAX, there's a bus stop accessible a short walk from baggage claim

Just follow the path to Century & Sepulveda Blvd's. Download the TAP app, load funds beforehand, and pay virtually

Look, even the pilots do it!

Two pilots with bags crossing a busy street in urban LA

A person's shadow in a landscaped walkway, with two pilots with bags walking in front towards a highway overpass and road.

Sign that reads "Walkway to Century Blvd. & Sepulveda Blvd," with a left hand arrow.

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Charlotte Leib @charlotte-leib.bsky.social · 3h

As #UHA2025LA kicks off, I’m happy to share here my most recent piece on the Metropole, on an understudied topic in #urbanhistory #envhist —how different lighting tech’s have affected birds & humans over the centuries & what we can do about it.

It’s a dual exposé & call to action Check it out here:

Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 6h

"Urban historians have written much about technological and social change in cities and very little about the ways in which historical transformations in lighting technologies have affected environments and ecologies, and the habitats and health of birds." from @charlotte-leib.bsky.social

Healing Wounds of Light: Birds, Cities and the Fast, Slow, and Forgotten Violence of Artificial Illumination

This post is an entry in our ninth annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest. This year’s theme is “Light.” By Charlotte Leib “Surely you’ve heard about the penguins,” behavioral ecologist Joanna Bu…

themetropole.blog

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Justin Randolph @randolphjustin.bsky.social · 5h

a great service to the profession from scholars doing excellent work!

Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 1d

⇨ Get ready for #UHA2025LA!

We're writing to introduce our #socialmedia volunteers, who will be roaming the conference and sharing updates via the Urban History Association's social media accounts on #BlueSky @urbanhistorya.bsky.social and #Instagram [@urbanhistoryassociation]

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 6h

"Urban historians have written much about technological and social change in cities and very little about the ways in which historical transformations in lighting technologies have affected environments and ecologies, and the habitats and health of birds." from @charlotte-leib.bsky.social

Healing Wounds of Light: Birds, Cities and the Fast, Slow, and Forgotten Violence of Artificial Illumination

This post is an entry in our ninth annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest. This year’s theme is “Light.” By Charlotte Leib “Surely you’ve heard about the penguins,” behavioral ecologist Joanna Bu…

themetropole.blog

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Charlotte Leib @charlotte-leib.bsky.social · 18h

Join the conversation at this year’s UHA conference with the hashtag #UHA2025LA 📑🌴🌆

We’ll “re-skeet” your panels if you promote ‘em! So get at it!

Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

Lookout for Margaret & @[email protected] 's posts on the UHA's BlueSky & Instagram accounts starting today & thru the conference weekend.

Re-share, reply & tag #UHA2025LA to promote your work, celebrate the work of presentees & join the conversation! …and don't forget to give us a follow!

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Lawrence Culver @lawrencecphd.bsky.social · 1d

I’m delighted to be on the program for the Urban History Association’s first ever conference in Los Angeles! My panel, “Summer in the City: Urban Heat in the Past, Present, and Future,” will be on Saturday. The program listing and abstract are below.

#UHA #urbanhist #envirohist

View of downtown skyline of Los Angeles, with snowy San Gabriel mountains in the distance. Cover of the Urban History Association’s program for their 11th biennial conference in Los Angeles this October 9-12.

Session 80 • Sat. 8:00-9:30 am

Summer in the City: Urban Heat in the Past, Present, and Future

Chair & Commentator:
Mars Plater University of Connecticut

Lawrence Culver Utah State University
Hidden Histories of Heat in LA's Land of Sunshine

Alison Rose Jefferson
Independent Historian and Heritage Conservation Consultant Black California Dreamin': Claiming Space at
America's Leisure Frontier

Elsa Devienne Northumbria University
History Tells Us LA's Beaches are Man-Made.
But How Long until They're Gone Forever?

Kara Schlichting Queens College, CUNY
Rethinking New York City's "Long Hot
Summers"

How can the history of heat inform our understanding of planning, parks, policing, incarceration, inequality, public recreation, and public health in cities?

This panel session considers how city people have survived sweaty summers in the past, and how authorities have reacted to civilians searching for relief from the heat.

Los Angeles-a city born in no small part through promotion of climate for recreation and health-is an apt place to ask these questions about the past while confronting a present and future threatened by climate catastrophe. Angelenos are grappling with devastating fires, sweltering heat, and other consequences of a changing and more chaotic climate.

Our panelists will look at examples from this and other cities to consider how the history of urban heat might inform planning for climate change's impacts.

Alison Rose Jefferson considers how climate and heat played a role in the histories of recreational and resort destinations for African American Southern Californians.

Lawrence Culver examines histories of heat concealed within LA's supposed climate paradise.

Elsa Devienne explores how the beaches of LA-climate refuges on hot days-are threatened by climate change and rising seas.

Across the continent, New York City's history is also shaped by urban heat. Mars Plater demonstrates that late nineteenth century New Yorkers were so eager to beat the heat that steamboat excursionists rioted rather than returning to the sweltering city.

Kara Schlichting illuminates how the urban heat island effect led to conflict, political concern, and police brutality in predominantly Black NYC neighborhoods in the summers of 1967 and 1968.

Together, these panelists and this session will examine heat as a historical issue in cities, and its importance for understanding our urban climatic past and future.

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Charlotte Leib @charlotte-leib.bsky.social · 22h

Really pleased to be sharing this project at #UHA2025LA this week.

Shoutout & big thanks to #AnitaBakshi for inviting me to contribute to #OurLandOurStories, #DavidNelson @amphilsociety.bsky.social for getting me started with coding last year, and the #RamapoughLunaapeNation for the collaboration.

Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 23h

⑵ Besides posting here during #UHA2025LA @charlotte-leib.bsky.social will be sharing a digital project this #Friday in #LA Titled "Wild Rice and Munsee Lenape Lifeways in the New Jersey Meadowlands," it is part of #OurLandOurStories our-land-our-stories.libraries.rutgers.edu/exhibits/sho... #envhist

Screenshot of a digital interactive map. The map comprises of several components. In the background are two side-by-side basemaps occupying different portions of the screen.

The one at the left comprises of historical black & white aerial imagery from the 1930s. It shows a patchwork landscape of urban development, rivers & meadows as seen from a considerable distance above the earth, as in a satellite image (except in this case, the historic black & white imagery was taken from a plane and later stitched together to form the complete "layer" shown on the map).

The basemap that appears beside it is a more recent satellite image, from the 2020s, that appears in color. The actual landscape shown is one landscape represented partway by the black & white aerial imagery, and partway by the color aerial imagery. Viewers familiar with New York City's geography will recognize the large rectilinear Central Park in Manhattan, which appears on the map's right-hand side. At left is the part of the landscape represented by the black and white historical aerial imagery, which comprises of Newark, Secaucus, Jersey City, and other towns along the Hudson River and Passaic and Hackensack Rivers. The layers comprise a large metropolitan landscape past and present.

Upon the map, 2 areas are highlighted in beige and purple opaque layers.

Atop is the purple layer, a white pop-up box with black text reads:
" Sëkëxkuk: 'Place of the black snakes.' Departing from Munsee Lenape tradition, colonial settlers rendered Sëkëxkuk as Sikakes. Today, the spot is known as Secaucus in a further phonetic and orthographic distortion of the phrase. The historic presence of snakes in this area, where freshwater and saltwater once met at the penultimate bend of the Hackensack River, is reflected in original Munsee place name and in the name of nearby Snake Hill."

Several placemarkers also appear on the map in blue. At the bottom right is a control bar with different map layers that the user can toggle.

This image is a detail of the larger map project described in the last alt-text entry. This image is taken at a closer scale and different layers are turned on within it to show slightly different information. The layer that is turned on shows historic Munsee Lenape settlements along the Passaic River in New Jersey, and another layer, overlapped beneath it, shows historic Lenape place names (i.e. "Passayack, Atchunk, Espating, Wiehaekse, Meghegtecuck").

Atop these map layers are the same beige and purple highlighted areas. Two blue placemarkers are visible on these layers. There is also a dashed purple line stretching from the southernmost Lenape village represented on the basemap, along the Passaic River, to the southernmost tip of the two areas highlighted in beige and purple.

Coming up from the blue placemarker that sits atop the purple layer is a pop-up box. The white pop-up box features a detail image of a herbarium specimen. That specimen is a dried wild rice plant. It appears with beige fronds and dense seedheads, strapped down by a piece of white paper.

In the pop-up box where this herbaria specimen appears, there is a title. It reads: " pèhpastèk | Zizania aquatica. Collector: J. V. Monachino. Date: August 11, 1936. Location: "Near Union City". Hudson County. Source: New York Botanical Garden.

On the upper left corner of the map is a plus/minus tool for zooming in and out. There is also a button for expanding full screen.

At the bottom right are the Layer Opacity and Map Layer control bars.

Along the bottom border of the image are some credits. They read: "Leaflet. Source: Kevin Wright & Bergen County Historical Society. Source: Newark Museum. © MapTiler & OpenStreetMap. A small Ukrainian flag icon appears next to the Leaflet label, inline with the small text. This text sits at the bottommost part of the map in small font.

The main feature of the image is the wild rice herbarium specimen, and the map layers.

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Maggie McNulty @maggiemcnulty.bsky.social · 21h

Almost in LA and looking forward to Addison Godel, Ben Lawson, and my panel “Legacies of 20th Century Waste in the City” chaired by Kathy Brosnan at #UHA2025LA this Friday where we’ll be chatting waste redevelopment projects from Tel Aviv to Toronto and New York to Denver @urbanhistorya.bsky.social

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

Lookout for Margaret & @[email protected] 's posts on the UHA's BlueSky & Instagram accounts starting today & thru the conference weekend.

Re-share, reply & tag #UHA2025LA to promote your work, celebrate the work of presentees & join the conversation! …and don't forget to give us a follow!

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

⑼ Margaret's project explores how #planners & #policymakers can center resident #memory in #anti-displacement development, drawing on #participatoryaction research

Pictured is one aspect of the project: the Smokey City Legacy #Museum, which Margaret built with the community in an abandoned daycare

A black woman with short, dyed-blonde hair reads an exhibition panel inside a building. The panel reads: "Our Story Begins" a its top. In smaller, more difficult to read text (given the scale of the image), the exhibition panel has components reading: "The Origins of Klondyke" ... "The First Plans of Klondike" ... "Early Klondike Real Estate Ads" ... "Klondike Gets its Name: 'Talk About a Gold Mine' ".

On the same panel, there's a black and white photograph at top right. It features an African-American family from the 19th century. The picture is surrounded by a gold frame and it appears printed on the exhibition board/panel.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

⑻ The project Margaret will be presenting at #UHA2025LA centers on #Klondike — #Memphis #Tennessee ’s first neighborhood designed for Black homeowners. The neighborhood is part of an emerging #CommunityLandTrust.

A dynamic page, clearly a screenshot from a website, that has nine rectangular feature images. They read: "Oral histories," "Building an archive," "Collective memory workshops," "Walking tours," "Pop up museums," "Zines/public facing materials," "Historical markers," "Remembrance events," "Historic house restoration." The community featured is clearly a primarily Black and Brown community.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

⑺ At UHA2025LA Margaret be sharing a paper from her dissertation on the panel "Recalling Power, Reclaiming Space to Dwell: The Archive Lives Here."

You can learn more about Margaret's community- and memory-driven work and published articles on her website: margarethaltom.com

Color photograph of a portion of a home with two BIPOC women standing in front of it, one, at left, pointing towards it. The portion of the home itself is on cinderblocks. It is a traditional southern house clad in white sideboard. It has two windows with green shutters, a green door, and a generous porch with ceiling fans mounted on the porch overhang. The portion of the house has a flat roof. In front of it are several large-scale posters with images of the house's original situation. One of them reads (in small text from afar) "Unsung Heros). There's a turquoise bike parked on the right side of the house near the cinderblocks that hold it up. The house has steps and the women stand in front of them, on waht appears to be an asphalt parking lot. There are some trees distantly on the horizon, but they are mostly hidden by the house. The sky is a brilliant, clear blue. Based on the shadows, it's likely in the late afternoon. Perhaps 6:30pm in the summer.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

➠ Next up on our volunteer #socialmedia team for #UHA2025LA is Margaret Haltom, an #UrbanPlanning PhD candidate at #MIT and a Visiting Assistant Professor of #CityPlanning at the University of Memphis, where her research focuses on #housing inequality, neighborhood change & community-oriented design

Photo portrait of a woman with brown wavy hair, white skin, and blue eyes. Image is focused crisply on her face and there’s a rural landscape blurred in the background. She is wearing a colorful patterned shirt with red, blue, and white chevron stripes, and gold square earrings, and a thin gold necklace.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 21h

⑷ She has published work in the Journal of Energy History ("Provisioning Parks in Petrochemical America," 2024), the edited volume New Jersey's Natures: Environmental Histories of the Garden State, and the UHA's #Metropole.
➤ stm.cairn.info/journal-of-e... #envhist #energyhistory #UHA2025LA

Cropped version of an an academic article in a journal. The Journal title is featured in a header in bold blue text on a white background that is centered on the top of the page. It reads "Journal of Energy History". In lighter weight text is the corresponding French title: "Revue d'histoire de l'energie."

The actual title of the article is "Provisioning Parks in Petrochemical America: Origins and Legacies of the Land and Water Conservation Fund." The title appears in centered on the page bold black text underneath the header.

Then, centered on the page beneath the article's title is an abstract. It reads: "Departing from past work that has positioned the attachment of US federal offshore oil and gas leasing revenues to the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 1968 as the outcome of a rare moment of bipartisan support for environmental protection in US Congress, this article argues that the arrangement served as a spatial fix for conditions that emerged with the growth of the American oil industry
and its expansion offshore. Tracing the fund’s political and economic origins and spatial legacies, it reveals how the fund perpetuated a model of conservation that primarily serviced the needs and interests of oil and gas, timbering, tourism, insurance and real estate industries—and white consumers. At a time when old energetic and spatial schemas had grown outmoded in the 1960’s, the attachment of petrocapital to parks funding largely reified existing racial and economic norms."

Next to the abstract at left is a column of text identifying the Author, the Post Date, the Issue Number, and the Theme of the Special Issue. The Author is: Charlotte Leib. The Post Date is: July 2024. The Theme of the Special Issue is: Black and Green? Environmental Histories of the Oil Industry. The word "Keywords" appears in the same column at the bottom-most part of the image. On the right of the page are two stacked aerial images of oil refineries and parks, highlighted in yellow & green.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 22h

⑶ Charlotte's dissertation examines how meadow plants, technologies & ideologies shaped patterns of growth/obsolescence #climatechange & #urbanization along the #NortheasternAtlanticSeaboard during the transition from the organic to fossil economies using the #NJ #Meadowlands as a central case study

A layered set of images showing in the main central area, in a linear format, from left to right, (1): an aerial image of a marsh suffering from an oil spill; (2): a "marsh organ"- a device designed to restore marshes and accumulate sediment that looks like the top of a pipe organ, filled with grass. The device is set in an estuary amidst a water- and marsh-scape; (3) an image that has a billboard within it that reads "WELCOME TO LENAPE LANDS #PAVONIA 1643 WE ARE STILL HERE" set atop a vintage film still of the New Jersey Turnpike stretching over the Meadowlands in the early 1950s.

Set behind the three images running from left to right is another aerial image of the Meadowlands marsh and Hackensack River estuary. The image shows clusters of marsh amidst water. The marsh appears as if it is eroding and diminishing with rising seas or incoming tides.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 22h

⑵ Besides posting here during #UHA2025LA @charlotte-leib.bsky.social will be sharing a digital project this #Friday in #LA Titled "Wild Rice and Munsee Lenape Lifeways in the New Jersey Meadowlands," it is part of #OurLandOurStories our-land-our-stories.libraries.rutgers.edu/exhibits/sho... #envhist

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 23h

⑴ First up is Charlotte Leib @charlotte-leib.bsky.social. Charlotte is a PhD Candidate in History at Yale University, where she primarily researches, teaches, and writes about American #energyhistory, #urbanhistory, and histories of the built environment. #UHA2025LA

Portrait of a woman kayaking at sunset. The sun is setting in a luminant golden, peachy orange hue in the background and the woman appears in the foreground in a fluorescent green kayak, smiling. She has a purple hat on and wears a big life vest. She is holding a paddle atop the kayak. Other kayakers can be seen on the water behind her, in the distance.

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 1d

⇨ Get ready for #UHA2025LA!

We're writing to introduce our #socialmedia volunteers, who will be roaming the conference and sharing updates via the Urban History Association's social media accounts on #BlueSky @urbanhistorya.bsky.social and #Instagram [@urbanhistoryassociation]

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

@LAhistory @lahistory.bsky.social · 1d

Looking forward to discussing #womenshistory on this @urbanhistorya.bsky.social panel! #UHA2025

Musician Manuela García (1860s-1930) will be one of the LA women in my talk. In 2020, a handful of scholars & artists developed this project about García's musical life: asapjournal.com/node/versos-...

Panel description for "Roundtable: Telling Herstory: New Approaches to Women's Public History in Los Angeles."

Black & white portrait of Manuela García, courtesy of the Autry.

Screen capture from the multi-faceted project "Versos y Besos: The Anthrophony of Manuela García." This image shows the section developed by historian Marissa López titled, "Mapping Manuela: Creating Spaces from Archival Traces."

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Lawrence Culver @lawrencecphd.bsky.social · 2d

Genevieve Carpio’s work is a great example of how insurance data can be an illuminating means to understand the past, from urban planning to historical discrimination, and all the different ways insurers assess and imagine “risk.”

Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 2d

The road has long been tumultuous for Latinos in places like California, as a site where the private space of the automobile and the public space of the street meet. @drgenacarpio.bsky.social on CA car insurance and the cultural history of race, redlining, and risk assessment.

California’s Invisible Infrastructure: What Auto Insurance Tells Us about Race, Risk, and Responsibility

By Genevieve Carpio Being a historian often means living with the contradictions of the present. As an Angeleno, I see my city in pain. There is resilience and courage too, but the suffering caused…

themetropole.blog

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 2d

The Metropole is collaborating with @nichecanada.bsky.social on a series dedicated to the dialogue between environmentalism and urbanism. Check out the call!

UHA/NiCHE Collaborative Call for Papers: Urban and Environmental Dialogues

A NiCHE/Metropole Blog Series Proposal Deadline: October 24, 2025 Draft Deadline: December 1, 2025 Series Publication: January/February 2025 The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) …

themetropole.blog

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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 2d

The road has long been tumultuous for Latinos in places like California, as a site where the private space of the automobile and the public space of the street meet. @drgenacarpio.bsky.social on CA car insurance and the cultural history of race, redlining, and risk assessment.

California’s Invisible Infrastructure: What Auto Insurance Tells Us about Race, Risk, and Responsibility

By Genevieve Carpio Being a historian often means living with the contradictions of the present. As an Angeleno, I see my city in pain. There is resilience and courage too, but the suffering caused…

themetropole.blog

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

Maggie McNulty @maggiemcnulty.bsky.social · 3d

En route to @urbanhistorya.bsky.social in LA

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

@LAhistory @lahistory.bsky.social · 3d

The @urbanhistorya.bsky.social conference begins this week (on Thurs) in downtown Los Angeles. Conference info: www.urbanhistory.org/uha2025 #HistorySky #skystorians #UHA2025

Here are a few more panels discussing SoCal & #LosAngelesHistory: ⬇️

Description for the "Making the New Deal Visible in Los Angeles" panel.

Description for the roundtable titled "Indigenous Urban Landscapes of Southern California"

Description for the "Stories from Sunset Over Sunset: Urban Histories of Change through the Lens of Ed Ruscha" panel.

Description for the "Reimagining the Settler City: Spatial Surveillance and Inequality in Los Angeles" panel.

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Reposted by Urban History Association (the official account)

scholarschoice.bsky.social @scholarschoice.bsky.social · 4d

We'll also be in L.A. this week for the
@urbanhistorya.bsky.social
conference where we'll be exhibitng books from 16 publishers. You can find us in the Gold Room of the Biltmore Hotel. #uha2025 #urbanhistory

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