June 20, 2013
The Metropolis Project, Part I
A Chilean glacier as seen from the deck of the Infinity, 2005. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs)
Recently, Metropolis Magazine, for which I’ve been writing a column called “America” for about nine years, redesigned its website. And, for reasons unknown, it was done in a way that renders useless all the links to all the stories that were on the site prior to the redesign. Everything on the site has a new link. Google, I think, has begun to catch up. But all links from elsewhere on the web to content that was posted before mid-May will yield an error message. (Including the links on the “some things I’ve written” page on this very site.) Clearly, this is not just my problem. It affects everyone who has written for the magazine since it launched its website. I’m guessing it might affect overall traffic to the site. (Unless landing on an error message counts as a page hit.)
Admittedly, the in-house search engine is better than it used to be. I can now search my name, in quotes, and not get every single story the magazine has ever run about Jane Jacobs. That’s an improvement. But, so far, I can only pull up my columns by “relevancy” as determined by the search engine. (The order-search-results-by-date function doesn’t seem to be working.) So I’m busily assembling my own chronological archive of columns and, in the process, will put up links to some of my favorites. Here’s the first batch:
The Cruise Ship Diaries, May 2005
In which D. and I set sail on the Infinity.
In which I consider Dubai and Shanghai’s Pudong as urban places
Jane Jacobs Revisited, August 2006
In which I finally read The Death and Life of Great American Cities
The Toothpaste Aisle, February 2005
In which I shop for a tube of Colgate.
In which I investigate the nature of “reality.”
A President and His Dog, August 2004
In which I spend quality time with George W. Bush’s website
In which I explore the philosophy of Boxism
Warhol’s Time Machine, November 2005
In which I visit Pittsburgh.
The Revolution that Never Quite Was, October 2006
In which I hang out with the renegade architects of Prickly Mountain, Vermont
What Comes After Modernism?, December 2004
In which I pose the question.