“Self-driving cars won’t work until we change our roads,” wrote Andrew Ng, chief of research at Chinese tech giant Baidu.1 Though Ng may exaggerate, autonomous vehicles (AVs) do benefit greatly from “smart infrastructure.” Witnessing AVs’ rise, American governments have eagerly begun smart infrastructure projects, but few have developed stable met…[Read more]

Big Trouble in the Big Easy: The Battle of Canal Street and the Independence of Black Political Power

The Great Fire of London that swept through the city in September of 1666 destroyed not only the physical infrastructure of myriad London buildings, but also many of the maps that reflected how London’s cartographers had envisioned their city. In an investigation of this event and the maps that predated and postdated it, I examines London’s reb…[Read more]