The Pitchfork

I've always been drawn to ruminations on the cities that I've lived in, their patterns and cycles. How one feature makes one city so much more livable than another. How another makes it a nightmare. The weird transformed Austin of my childhood, car-culture imprisoned Arlington Texas and Phoenix, the strange two-city feel of San Antonio, the desperate ruins of Detroit have all been so starkly different that I can't help but get caught in the comparisons—and in impossible dreams of what cities might look like if they were transformed and liberated. Knocking doors 6-7 days a week for an extended period of time—as I have in this election cycle--also starts to give you a certain intimacy with the city that you just don't get any other way. You feel the rhythms of people coming and going, get minute-by-minute glimpses in how they lead their lives, and gain an immediate knowledge of just how walkable and livable their neighborhoods are. The majority of the l