Holy Mountain: A Blog about Our Common Life

(Google Maps screenshot) (9/5/2026) Ten years ago, we in the United States were engaged in a presidential election campaign that would bring us the first of two presidential terms for Donald Trump.

Schematic drawing shows car lanes and new wider pedestrian areas The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice--THEODORE PARKER, 1853 (later made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr.) (8/27/2026) The 8th Avenue bridge is going to be comp…

$185,000 bought this house five blocks from me Charles L.

Marion portion of Linn County Trails and Bikeways Map (downloaded from linncountytrails.org) (8/18/2026) Linn County's first designated bicycle boulevard, announced ten years ago, may be forgotten but it is not gone.

Rising rents are just one obstacle to opportunity today (Source: Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University) (8/11/2026) Some time ago, First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids engaged me to do two talks, on justice and social welfare.

Hope he gets some of that coffee: Statue of Thucydides in Vienna, Austria (7/31/2026) A long time ago, according to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE), a delegation from Athens went to the burg of Melos to demand its surrender.

You can get there from here!

Hickok Hall at Coe College, where your humble and mostly retired blogger wrote this post I've been out of full-time teaching for two years now, which has left me with more time to read and write.

We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources.-- PETE SAUNDERS Ten years ago, I was gearing up to teach the next generation of first-year Coe College students about urbanism.

Eric Klinenberg at CNU34 Twenty-first century social infrastructures are already reviving civic life in nations across the planet: public plazas in low-lying cities that double as massive water storage systems during extreme weather events; massive levees…

Source: bakeracademic.com Eric O.

The lives we should all be living: "Texas Two-Step," a movie on the Hallmark Channel, offers romance and country music in a small town third place (swiped from hallmarkchannel.com) (6/16/2026) In my last post, I noted the reputation of the 1990s TV series…

The hit 90s TV series Friends was a harbinger of the "back to the city" years: Where are today's "friends" living?

The Landing: Apartments with first floor retail, Iowa River Landing Ten years ago, Ben Kaplan criticized Coralville's Iowa River Landing development as having the design of an urban area but without the connection to or from other places that is essential…

Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett, Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality (Island Press, 2018), xiii + 223pp. (6/2/2026) When the husband-and-wife team of Melissa and Chris Bruntlett toured bicycling facilities in the Nether…

Dale Todd speaks at Cedar Rapids Public Library, May 2016 "Waterfronts are the rock stars of city infrastructure."-- MATTHEW LISTER, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR GEHL AMERICAS, AT CNU34 (5/23/2026) When Dale Todd spoke at a special edition of 1 Million Cups Cedar

Hi from the town with the big friendly ball!

I biked to work!

Some of us have to live with the consequences of another legislative session (5/7/2026) Iowa's public approval of President Donald Trump has dipped to 42 percent in 2026, according to the World Population Review; that puts us only slightly above the natio…

Free on-street parking (free with two-hour limit), New Bohemia, October 2025 (4/29/2026) The City of Cedar Rapids is taking a realistic approach to parking issues in the "Core Four" neighborhoods (Downtown, Czech Village, New Bohemia, and Kingston).

As a child, I loved to color maps, or copy the ones in the phone book with tracing paper I (4/22/2026) My urbanist journey began when I taught a first-year course on place at Coe College in 2008.

Litter is a plague on our cities (4/1/2026) Ten years ago this month, I wrote about a fellow who used the grassy median on our street as his dog's toilet.

Bloch, Sam.

Follow the signs to the 2026 Maple Syrup Festival!

Was dead-ending 2nd Avenue a mistake, given the property tax volcano that is PCI?