Blog

Notes on cities & infrastructure

Shorter pieces, field notes, and thinking-in-progress. More frequent than the newsletter; less finished than the essays. Everything here is in some sense a draft.

No. 31Jan 2026

Thirty years and a light rail

Tel Aviv's red line finally opened. The delay lasted longer than some of my readers have been alive. What does a delay that long cost a city — not in money, but in behaviour, in expectation, in how people learn to move?

Tel Aviv Transit Infrastructure

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No. 30Nov 2025

The Plovdiv model

Bulgaria's second city has been losing population for thirty years. Every infrastructure decision is made in the shadow of that decline. What happens when a city has to plan without the assumption of growth?

Plovdiv Mid-size cities Demographic decline

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No. 29Aug 2025

Against smart city announcements

The cities on the conference circuit are rarely the ones doing the most interesting work. The interesting work happens quietly, in places that cannot afford to announce themselves first.

Smart cities Urban governance Policy

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No. 28Jun 2025

Why I write about Israel in English

I have never published in Hebrew. This is not an accident. It is a decision I made around 2010 and have not revisited since, because the reasoning still holds. The conversations worth having about cities are happening in English.

Writing Israel Language

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