Medium Blogs that Give a Fresh Perspective to the Conversation About Cities and Public Space
To kick off my posting to Medium, I read a few posts by bloggers Paris Marx, James Gleave and Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman to get a feel for the ideas being bounced around on this platform about public space and cities, since those are the topics I’m going to touch on in this space.
The first blogger I came across was Marx mostly because in my search for articles related to my interests in urban geography, his titles pulled me in. I wanted to know more about The Backlash Against Apple’s ‘Town Squares’ and how Bird Will Try Anything to Turn a Profit and “Want to Fix the Housing Crisis? Build More Public Housing.” Effective titles get attention, and these titles certainly got mine.
Upon reading those articles, I found that Marx is very skilled at presenting an introduction that explains the slightly click-baity title by giving you just enough information, while keeping you in to keep going. Here’s the thing, though: despite well-placed subheadings, helpful statistics and in some cases, engaging graphics, the arguments got a little repetitive by the end. Sometimes it’s best to stop while you’re ahead and in the case of the drier arguments left for the bottom, I think a quicker conclusion would have served.
From there, I checked out some of Marx’s followers, because I was into his urban technology beat and Gleave’s articles in Transport Futures caught my eye. Although his titles were a little more boring and less explicative, I did like his cover photos (who isn’t going to check out an article with a weird, broken-looking bus stopping traffic?) and his little sub-titles were good — they captured some element of controversy or presented an opinion that made me want to hear what he had to say.
I also appreciated his method of breaking up the text with bolded words, bullet points and even an FAQ style section in the middle of an article. What didn’t interest me at all, though, was his series of articles — I didn’t want to read them all to get the context and I didn’t get enough of the vibe from the sub-descriptions. They would have stood alone better.
Lastly, I came across Johnston-Zimmerman’s pieces, which I loved for their content, which at the end of the day, is what we’re all striving for, right? She takes on a feminist perspective in her article about women-led cities, and I appreciated her critical positivity in her article about bike usage in cities. Best of all, she’s authentic. Sometimes that authenticity lead her to include photos that might be a little grainier or less professional than a stock photo might be, but they contributed to the very real feeling to her writing. For as much as you can get readers onto your page, her authenticity is what kept me there.
