Patrick Sisson - Writer, Journalist, Cultural Documentarian, Music Lover

Category: CityLab

Bloomberg CityLab January 2021 Robert Futrell has spent decades studying right-wing militia movements. A professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he watched as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, killing a Capitol Police officer. Four others also died in the attack, which was part of an ongoing […]

CityLab November, 2020 When a tub of popcorn can run nearly $10, renting out an entire theater for $99 seems like a steal. For AMC Theatres, the mega-chain that recently introduced the private screening plan as a Covid-era concession to safety and shrinking audiences, it’s more a desperate ploy to keep the lights on as the […]

Bloomberg CityLab October 2020 This summer, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti found himself generating international headlines for cracking down on a house party. On Aug. 19, city officials disconnected utilities at the Hollywood Hills home of Bryce Hall, Noah Beck and Blake Gray, young stars on the video platform TikTok who had turned their residence — a rented 8,500-square foot mansion […]

Bloomberg CityLab November 2020 As a nail-biter U.S. election creeps to its resolution — and tallies in urban areas decide key battleground states — a few things are clear. While the ideological cleavage between urban and rural parts of the country continues to grow, progressive candidates at the local level had a strong showing on […]

Bloomberg CityLab August 2020 The coronavirus pandemic has revived interest in the role design has played fighting infectious diseases. Most famously, the trailblazing modern architecture of the early 20th century — open to nature and filled with light and air, as practiced by designers such as Alvar Aalto and Richard Neutra — reflected au courant ideas about health and wellness, especially in […]

Bloomberg CityLab July 2020 Ellicia Lanier, 39, executive director of Urban Sprouts Child Development Center in University City, Missouri, outside St. Louis, considers herself one of the lucky ones. A Black mother of seven whose interest in early childhood development led her to start a nonprofit early learning center, she’s fought to keep her business afloat […]

Bloomberg CityLab July 2020 The Covid-19 crisis in the U.S. has torn a hole in city budgets, decimating urban economies across the country even as infections continue to roar back and the specter of second-wave lockdowns loom. Las Vegas faces “the most serious fiscal crisis” it’s ever faced. The pandemic is hitting Houston’s finances harder than Hurricane Harvey, […]

CityLab July 2020 Freddie O’Connell remembers when Nashville’s Lower Broadway wasn’t a strip of country music bars frequented by bachelorette parties and tourists for its Instagram-worthy backdrops. The city council member for District 19, who represents the city’s burgeoning downtown, remembers decades ago, when there was a seedy Times Square feel, when adult bookstores lined […]

CityLab June 2020 It’s definitely, finally, without a doubt, the end of malls, right?  The multiple crises impacting the U.S. economy — the botched response to the coronavirus and the resulting economic fallout, and lack of spending power — have delivered a new gut punch to brick-and-mortar retail, a sector that was already reeling. More than half of all U.S. […]

CityLab June 2020 During this extraordinary time in America’s cities — weeks of coronavirus lockdowns followed by mass protests against police violence and racial inequality — one theme runs through the twinned crises: the power and value of public spaces. The nation’s parks experienced a surge of use during the pandemic that closed stores and […]